Galaxy evolution, near and far

亚毫米量级的大气窗口可以用来观测早期宇宙尘埃遮挡活动产生的远红外辐射。我的团队对亚毫米星系进行了第一次大规模的红移调查，描述了这一重要星系群的演化，并促进了用其他望远镜对这些星系的详细研究。这项研究发表在《自然》杂志(2003)上，在所有天文学论文中有0.1%的被引用记录。在补充意义上，理解星系的形成和演化所需的许多信息可以从附近星系的高质量“化石记录”数据中收集到。我的团队已经开始对我们最近的螺旋星系邻居M31中的红巨星进行有史以来最大的径向速度和金属丰度调查。外晕和盘区的大规模运动学特征已经产生了意想不到的重要发现，即一个延伸到大约22万光年半径的巨型扩展盘，以及一个类似于我们银河系的不旋转的贫金属晕。我们对M31中外盘和光晕的运动学特征在《天文学》杂志上跻身2005年十大发现之列。

The atmospheric windows in the submillimetre (submm) can be used to observe the far-infrared(IR) emission from dust-obscured activity in the early Universe. My group conducted the first large redshift survey of galaxies emitting strongly in the submm, characterising the evolution of this important galaxy population, and facilitating the detailed study of the galaxies with other telescopes. The work was announced in Nature (2003), and has a citation record in the top 0.1% of all papers in astronomy. In a complementary sense, much of the information required to understand the formation and evolution of galaxies can be gleaned from high quality `fossil record' data on nearby galaxies. My group has initiated the largest ever radial velocity and metallicity survey of red giant stars in our nearest spiral galaxy neighbor, M31. The large-scale kinematic characterisation of the outer halo and disk regions have yielded unexpected and important discoveries, namely a giant extended disk out to ~220,000 light years radius, and a non-rotating metal-poor halo analogous to that of our own Milky Way. Our kinematic characterisation of the outer disk and halo in M31 made the top-10 discoveries of 2005 in Astronomy magazine.