The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey:
The Hunt for Radio Galaxies
Shawn Golley '08

Shawn slaving away with gridview	The payoff: Hunting for galaxies at Arecibo More pics of Shawn at Arecibo

Abstract:

   The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey is a blind search for extragalactic emissions of neutral hydrogen (H1) covering 7000 square degrees of the southern sky over a redshift range of –1,600 to 18,000 km/s. I continued the study of a swatch of sky between 11^h 43^m and 11^h 53^m of right ascension and 12° 0′ and 14° 0′ declination begun by Jamie Lomax ’07. I used the NASA Extragalactic Database and the ALFALFA Consortium Catalog to flesh out the information about the sources of hydrogen found by Lomax. I began the process of looking at some of the particular structural features of this region, including the Hickson Compact Group of galaxies HCG 059. I also examined the process of hyperfine splitting within the hydrogen atom which produces emissions at a wavelength of 21 cm – the wavelength observed by the ALFA array at the Arecibo Telescope. Additionally, I created detailed documentation for using the gridview data analysis software used in the ALFALFA project.

   (Photos of Shawn's trip to Arecibo, January 2008)

   For more information, contact Dr. Aileen O'Donoghue:

Return To 2008 Senior Projects

©	St. Lawrence University	Department of Physics

Revised: 07 Jul 2008

Canton, NY 13617