The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey

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Arecibo Observatory

Preparation for UAT 2014 Workshop Observing Proposal Planning Telecon

Purpose

At the January 2014 workshop, we will be observing galaxies in groups that show evidence of star formation, but were not detected by ALFALFA. This telecon will discuss background on ALFALFA and groups of galaxies.

Background Reading

Review the Introduction to Arecibo Observing
Review the ALFALFA summary of 21-cm radiation, describing the 3 things the 21-cm spectrum tells you about a galaxy. Also review Hubble's Law.
Read about the ALFALFA survey.
Review the Large Scale Structure of the Universe
Read about What's in an Environment

Questions

Write a short summary about the ALFALFA survey. What are the goals? What has been found so far?
What is meant by large scale structure? What are groups of galaxies? Why is ALFALFA so helpful in studying groups of galaxies?
How are gas content and star formation related? If we found a galaxy with star formation, would we expect it to have HI?
How is the HI mass of a galaxy determined from an observation at Arecibo?
What is the exposure time of an ALFALFA observation? How does the HI mass that we detect depend on distance?
Let's say we find a galaxy with star formation, but we don't detect it in ALFALFA. Why might that be?
What does "L-band" mean?
The ALFALFA survey is using the ALFA detector. But we plan to followup group galaxies using the L-Band Wide (LBW) detector. Why don't we use ALFA?

Answers will be discussed in the First Observing Proposal Planning Telecon

Last modified: Mon Oct 28 13:45:29 EDT 2013