Lyman Alpha Radiation
A Lyman-alpha emitter (LAE) is a type of distant galaxy that emits Lyman-alpha radiation from neutral hydrogen. Most known LAEs are extremely distant, and because of the finite travel time of light they provide glimpses into the history of the universe. They are thought to be the progenitors of most modern Milky Way type galaxies. These galaxies can be found nowadays rather easily in narrow-band searches by an excess of their narrow-band flux at a wavelength which may be interpreted from their redshift : 1+z=\frac where z is the redshift, \lambda is the observed wavelength, and 1215.67 Å is the wavelength of Lyman-alpha emission. The Lyman-alpha line in most LAEs is thought to be caused by recombination of interstellar hydrogen that is ionized by an ongoing burst of star formation. Such Lyman alpha emission was first suggested as a signature of young galaxies by Bruce Partridge and P. J. E. Peebles in 1967. Experimental observations of the redshift of LAEs are importan ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lyman Alpha Blob
Lyman may refer to: Places Ukraine * Lyman, Ukraine, a city, formerly the administrative center of Lyman Raion, Donetsk Oblast * Lyman Raion, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, a former ''raion'' (district) * Lyman Raion, Odesa Oblast, Ukraine, a former ''raion'' United States * Lyman, Iowa, an unincorporated community * Lyman, Maine, a town * Lyman, Mississippi, a census-designated place * Lyman, Nebraska, a village * Lyman, New Hampshire, a town * Lyman, Oklahoma, a town * Lyman, South Carolina, a town * Lyman County, South Dakota ** Lyman, South Dakota, an unincorporated community in the county * Lyman, Utah, a town * Lyman, Washington, a town * Lyman, Wyoming, a town * Lyman Glacier (Mount Adams), Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Washington state * Lyman Glacier (North Cascades), Wenatchee National Forest, Washington state * Lyman Mountain, Oregon * Lyman Reservoir, Arizona Outer space * Lyman (crater), a lunar impact crater Other uses * Lyman (name), a list of people and fict ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Radiative Transfer
Radiative transfer (also called radiation transport) is the physical phenomenon of energy transfer in the form of electromagnetic radiation. The propagation of radiation through a medium is affected by absorption, emission, and scattering processes. The equation of radiative transfer describes these interactions mathematically. Equations of radiative transfer have application in a wide variety of subjects including optics, astrophysics, atmospheric science, and remote sensing. Analytic solutions to the radiative transfer equation (RTE) exist for simple cases but for more realistic media, with complex multiple scattering effects, numerical methods are required. The present article is largely focused on the condition of radiative equilibrium. Definitions The fundamental quantity that describes a field of radiation is called spectral radiance in radiometric terms (in other fields it is often called specific intensity). For a very small area element in the radiation field, th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lyman Series
In physics and chemistry, the Lyman series is a hydrogen spectral series of transitions and resulting ultraviolet emission lines of the hydrogen atom as an electron goes from ''n'' ≥ 2 to ''n'' = 1 (where ''n'' is the principal quantum number), the lowest energy level of the electron (groundstate). The transitions are named sequentially by Greek letters: from ''n'' = 2 to ''n'' = 1 is called Lyman-alpha, 3 to 1 is Lyman-beta, 4 to 1 is Lyman-gamma, and so on. The series is named after its discoverer, Theodore Lyman. The greater the difference in the principal quantum numbers, the higher the energy of the electromagnetic emission. History The first line in the spectrum of the Lyman series was discovered in 1906 by physicist Theodore Lyman IV, who was studying the ultraviolet spectrum of electrically excited hydrogen gas. The rest of the lines of the spectrum (all in the ultraviolet) were discovered by Lyman from 1906-1914. The spectrum of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lyman Limit
In physics and chemistry, the Lyman limit is the short-wavelength end of the Lyman series of hydrogen emission lines at . The associated photon energy, 13.6 eV, corresponds to the energy required for an electron in the hydrogen ground state to escape from the electric potential barrier that originally confined it, thus creating a hydrogen ion. This energy is equivalent to the Rydberg constant. See also * Lyman–Werner photons * Balmer series The Balmer series, or Balmer lines in atomic physics, is one of a set of hydrogen spectral series, six named series describing the spectral line emissions of the hydrogen atom. The Balmer series is calculated using the Balmer formula, an empiri ... * Balmer break * Lyman-break galaxy * Lyman-alpha emitter * Lyman-alpha forest References Atomic physics {{AMO-physics-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lyman-break Galaxy
Lyman-break galaxies are star-forming galaxies at high redshift that are selected using the differing appearance of the galaxy in several imaging filters due to the position of the Lyman limit. The technique has primarily been used to select galaxies at redshifts of ''z'' = 3–4 using ultraviolet and optical filters, but progress in ultraviolet astronomy and in infrared astronomy has allowed the use of this technique at lower and higher redshifts using ultraviolet and near-infrared filters. The Lyman-break galaxy selection technique relies upon the fact that radiation at higher energies than the Lyman limit at 912 Å is almost completely absorbed by neutral gas around star-forming regions of galaxies. In the rest frame of the emitting galaxy, the emitted spectrum is bright at wavelengths longer than 912 Å, but very dim or imperceptible at shorter wavelengths. This is known as a " dropout", or "break", and can be used to find the position of the Lyman ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lyman-alpha Forest
In astronomical spectroscopy, the Lyman-alpha forest is a series of absorption lines in the spectra of distant galaxies and quasars arising from the Lyman-alpha electron transition of the neutral hydrogen atom. As the light travels through multiple gas clouds with different redshifts, multiple absorption lines are formed. History The Lyman-alpha forest was first discovered in 1970 by astronomer Roger Lynds in an observation of the quasar 4C 05.34. Quasar 4C 05.34 was the farthest object observed to that date, and Lynds noted an unusually large number of absorption lines in its spectrum and suggested that most of the absorption lines were all due to the same Lyman-alpha transition. Follow-up observations by John Bahcall and Samuel Goldsmith confirmed the presence of the unusual absorption lines, though they were less conclusive about the origin of the lines. Subsequently, the spectra of many other high-redshift quasars were observed to have the same system of narrow absorption ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lyman-alpha Blob
In astronomy, a Lyman-alpha blob (LAB) is a huge concentration of a gas emitting the Lyman-alpha emission line. LABs are some of the largest known individual objects in the Universe. Some of these gaseous structures are more than 400,000 light years across. So far they have only been found in the high-redshift universe because of the ultraviolet nature of the Lyman-alpha emission line. Since Earth's atmosphere is very effective at filtering out UV photons, the Lyman-alpha photons must be redshifted in order to be transmitted through the atmosphere. The most famous Lyman-alpha blobs were discovered in 2000 by Steidel et al. Matsuda et al., using the Subaru Telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan extended the search for LABs and found over 30 new LABs in the original field of Steidel et al., although they were all smaller than the originals. These LABs form a structure which is more than 200 million light-years in extent. It is currently unknown whether LABs ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Damped Lyman-alpha System
Damped Lyman alpha systems or Damped Lyman alpha absorption systems is a term used by astronomers for concentrations of neutral hydrogen gas that are detected in the spectra of quasars – a class of distant Active Galactic Nuclei. They are defined to be systems where the column density (density projected along the line of sight to the quasar) of hydrogen is larger than 2 x 1020 atoms/cm2. The observed spectra consist of neutral hydrogen Lyman alpha absorption lines which are broadened by radiation damping. These systems can be observed in quantity at relatively high redshifts of 2–4, when they contained most of the neutral hydrogen in the universe. They are believed to be associated with the early stages of galaxy formation, as the high neutral hydrogen column densities of DLAs are also typical of sightlines in the Milky Way The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
In cosmology, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) are fluctuations in the density of the visible baryonic matter (normal matter) of the universe, caused by Acoustics, acoustic density waves in the primordial plasma of the early universe. In the same way that supernovae provide a "standard candle" for astronomical observations, BAO matter clustering provides a "standard ruler" for length scale in cosmology. The length of this standard ruler is given by the maximum distance the acoustic waves could travel in the primordial plasma before the plasma cooled to the point where it became neutral atoms (Recombination (cosmology), the epoch of recombination), which stopped the expansion of the plasma density waves, "freezing" them into place. The length of this standard ruler (≈490 million light years in today's universe ) can be measured by looking at the Large-scale structure of the universe, large scale structure of matter using astronomical surveys. BAO measurements help cosmologi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Reionization
In the fields of Big Bang theory and physical cosmology, cosmology, reionization is the process that caused electrically neutral atoms in the primordial universe to reionize after the lapse of the "Timeline of the Big Bang#Dark Ages, dark ages". Detecting and studying the reionization process is challenging but multiple avenues have been pursued. This reionization was driven by the formation of the first stars and galaxies. Concept Reionization refers to a change in the intergalactic medium from neutral hydrogen to ions. The neutral hydrogen had been ions at an earlier stage in the history of the universe, thus the conversion back into ions is termed a ''re''ionization. The reionization was driven by energetic photons emitted by the first stars and galaxies. In the timeline of the universe, neutral hydrogen gas was originally formed when primordial hydrogen nuclei (protons) combined with electrons. Light with sufficient energy will ionize neutral hydrogen gas. At early t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Metallicity
In astronomy, metallicity is the Abundance of the chemical elements, abundance of Chemical element, elements present in an object that are heavier than hydrogen and helium. Most of the normal currently detectable (i.e. non-Dark matter, dark) matter in the universe is either hydrogen or helium, and astronomers use the word ''metals'' as convenient shorthand for ''all elements except hydrogen and helium''. This word-use is distinct from the conventional chemical or physical definition of a metal as an electrically conducting element. Stars and nebulae with relatively high abundances of heavier elements are called ''metal-rich'' when discussing metallicity, even though many of those elements are called ''Nonmetal (chemistry), nonmetals'' in chemistry. Metals in early spectroscopy In 1802, William Hyde WollastonMelvyn C. UsselmanWilliam Hyde WollastonEncyclopædia Britannica, retrieved 31 March 2013 noted the appearance of a number of dark features in the solar spectrum. In 1814, Jo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Interstellar Medium
The interstellar medium (ISM) is the matter and radiation that exists in the outer space, space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, as well as cosmic dust, dust and cosmic rays. It fills interstellar space and blends smoothly into the surrounding intergalactic medium. The energy that occupies the same volume, in the form of electromagnetic radiation, is the interstellar radiation field. Although the density of atoms in the ISM is usually far below that in the best laboratory vacuums, the mean free path between collisions is short compared to typical interstellar lengths, so on these scales the ISM behaves as a gas (more precisely, as a Plasma (physics), plasma: it is everywhere at least slightly ionized), responding to pressure forces, and not as a collection of non-interacting particles. The interstellar medium is composed of multiple phases distinguished by whether matter is ionic, atomic, or molecular, and the temp ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |