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Future Prospects: Deep Imaging of Galaxy Outskirts Using Telescopes Large and Small

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Book cover Outskirts of Galaxies

Part of the book series: Astrophysics and Space Science Library ((ASSL,volume 434))

Abstract

The Universe is almost totally unexplored at low surface brightness levels. In spite of great progress in the construction of large telescopes and improvements in the sensitivity of detectors, the limiting surface brightness of imaging observations has remained static for about 40 years. Recent technical advances have at last begun to erode the barriers preventing progress. In this chapter, we describe the technical challenges to low surface brightness imaging, describe some solutions and highlight some relevant observations that have been undertaken recently with both large and small telescopes. Our main focus will be on discoveries made with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array (Dragonfly), which is a new telescope concept designed to probe the Universe down to hitherto unprecedented low surface brightness levels. We conclude by arguing that these discoveries are probably only scratching the surface of interesting phenomena that are observable when the Universe is explored at low surface brightness levels.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Re-imaging optics are an essential component of cameras on large telescopes for many reasons, e.g. to reduce their long native focal lengths in order to provide reasonable image scales on relatively small sensors. Most small telescopes utilize small and simple flat-field correctors or even image straight onto their sensors, since some small telescope optical designs have intrinsically well-corrected flat focal planes that are a good match to CCD pixel sizes.

  2. 2.

    Most investigations to date using amateur telescopes have been biased towards imaging “pretty” galaxies with known peculiarities, using imaging setups without standard filter sets or even without any filters at all. In many cases this is because the equipment being used is optimized for aesthetic or artistic imaging. Actually, judged as works of art, we think the absolutely spectacular images generated by many of these amateurs far out-distance the images produced by most professional astronomers.

  3. 3.

    Obviously, for most problems in astronomy, one does care about resolution, and on the rare occasions when one doesn’t, with digital detectors, one can always rebin data. That said, we recently scratched our heads at the wisdom of having to do a 15 × 15 rebinning of beautiful 0.5 arcsec seeing CFHT and Gemini imaging data in order to obtain signal-to-noise levels comparable to those obtained using telephoto lenses for a number of very diffuse low surface brightness structures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 50 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5S 3H4

    Roberto Abraham, Jielai Zhang & Deborah Lokhorst

  2. Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 50 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5S 3H4

    Roberto Abraham, Jielai Zhang & Deborah Lokhorst

  3. Department of Astronomy, Yale University, Steinbach Hall, 52 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA

    Pieter van Dokkum, Allison Merritt, Shany Danieli & Lamiya Mowla

  4. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Charlie Conroy & Shany Danieli

  5. Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, 60 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5S 3H8

    Jielai Zhang

  6. Department of Physics, Yale University, 266 Whitney Avenue, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA

    Shany Danieli

  7. Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, 52 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA

    Shany Danieli

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  1. Roberto Abraham
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  2. Pieter van Dokkum
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  3. Charlie Conroy
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  4. Allison Merritt
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  5. Jielai Zhang
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  6. Deborah Lokhorst
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  7. Shany Danieli
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  8. Lamiya Mowla
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Correspondence to Roberto Abraham .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst de Astrofísica de Canarias, San Cristobal de la Laguna, Spain

    Johan H. Knapen

  2. Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA

    Janice C. Lee

  3. Dept. Astrofisica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Armando Gil de Paz

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Abraham, R. et al. (2017). Future Prospects: Deep Imaging of Galaxy Outskirts Using Telescopes Large and Small. In: Knapen, J., Lee, J., Gil de Paz, A. (eds) Outskirts of Galaxies. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 434. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56570-5_10

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