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Astrophysics: Radio Astronomy
Faculty in this area of research:
Gravitational
lenses are a useful tool for many astrophysical problems. Professor
Jaqueline Hewitt is applying them to the investigation of the geometry
of the universe, the mass distribution in galaxies, and the supermassive
black holes at the center of galaxies. Another research interest
is searching for evidence for early structure formation and reionization
in the very young universe. At these early times in the history
of the universe, when star and/or galaxy formation was just beginning,
inhomogeneities in the neutral and ionized hydrogen should have
produced signatures observable now in the highly redshifted 21 cm
line of hydrogen.
Professor
Hewitt is also interested in the development of instrumentation
for radio astronomy. She is currently involved in developing radio
telescopes with large aperture which represent the "next generation"
in radio astronomical instrumentation. In particular, with the Haystack Observatory interferometer group,
she is part of a U.S.-Australian collaboration developing
the Mileura Widefield Array, a low-frequency radio telescope in Western
Australia.
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