Towards Kinetic Tomography in the LSST Era

Joshua Peek (Columbia Astronomy Department)

Towards Kinetic Tomography in the LSST Era

High fidelity, deep, digital surveys have led to an explosion of studies of the interstellar medium through extinction. In the Galaxy, these studies give us a rough idea of where dusty material exists, but nothing about its kinematic structure. Studies of ISM emission lines such as HI and CO give us an understanding of the velocity structure of the gas, but very limited distance information. To understand the formation of the Galaxy and objects within it, we need to both understand the position of gas and its velocity. I will outline some current and future work developing kinetic tomography, a method that merges stellar distances and extinctions with radio data cubes, and that reveals the gaseous universe in four dimensions.

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The National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Green Bank Observatory are facilities of the U.S. National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.