Rychard Bouwens

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Rychard J. Bouwens is an associate professor at Leiden University. [1] [2] He is also a former member of the Advanced Camera for Surveys Guaranteed Time Observation team and postdoctoral research astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He obtained his bachelor's degree in physics, chemistry, and mathematics from Hope College. He then went on to earn his Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Joseph Silk and also worked with Tom Broadhurst. [3] [4]

He works on the interpretation of high redshift starbursts. [5] [6] He helped create the Bouwens' Universe Construction Set (BUCS), which can simulate arbitrary galaxy fields and calculate any galaxy observables. [7]

Throughout his career, he has broken the record for discovering the most distant galaxy in the universe, including three sources in 2015–2016 with record-breaking spectroscopic redshift measurements at z=7.73 (see EGS-zs8-1), [8] [9] z=8.68 (see EGSY8p7), [10] and z=11.1 (see GN-z11). [11] [12] [13] In a 2011 Nature paper, [14] his team discovered galaxy UDFj-39546284 with a photometric redshift of ~10 [15] [16] and was immediately heralded as the most distant source known in the universe. [17] [18] [19] It was later estimated to have a redshift of 11.9. [20]

In 2013, [21] [22] [23] he was awarded the Pastoor Schmeitsprijs voor de Sterrenkunde, [24] a prize in the Netherlands given to the researcher (under the age of 40) judged to have made the most significant contribution to astronomy.

In 2019, Rychard was the successful principal investigator of the REBELS ALMA Large Program, [25] a 70-hour program to identify a substantial sample of luminous interstellar medium reservoirs in the first 800 million years of the universe at z>~6.5. [26] [27] Thanks to the results from the program, [CII] and dust were prominently detected in >~18 sources at z>~6.5. [28] [29]

Over the course of his career, Bouwens has five published papers in Nature , two as first author, [14] [30] one as second author, [31] and two for Nature News & Views. [32] [33]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fornax</span> Constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere

Fornax is a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, partly ringed by the celestial river Eridanus. Its name is Latin for furnace. It was named by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1756. Fornax is one of the 88 modern constellations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quasar</span> Active galactic nucleus containing a supermassive black hole

A quasar is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. The emission from an AGN is powered by a supermassive black hole with a mass ranging from millions to tens of billions of solar masses, surrounded by a gaseous accretion disc. Gas in the disc falling towards the black hole heats up and releases energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. The radiant energy of quasars is enormous; the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than that of a galaxy such as the Milky Way. Quasars are usually categorized as a subclass of the more general category of AGN. The redshifts of quasars are of cosmological origin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Redshift</span> Change of wavelength in photons during travel

In physics, a redshift is an increase in the wavelength, and corresponding decrease in the frequency and photon energy, of electromagnetic radiation. The opposite change, a decrease in wavelength and increase in frequency and energy, is known as a blueshift, or negative redshift. The terms derive from the colours red and blue which form the extremes of the visible light spectrum. The main causes of electromagnetic redshift in astronomy and cosmology are the relative motions of radiation sources, which give rise to the relativistic Doppler effect, and gravitational potentials, which gravitationally redshift escaping radiation. All sufficiently distant light sources show cosmological redshift corresponding to recession speeds proportional to their distances from Earth, a fact known as Hubble's law that implies the universe is expanding.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubble's law</span> Observation in physical cosmology

Hubble's law, also known as the Hubble–Lemaître law, is the observation in physical cosmology that galaxies are moving away from Earth at speeds proportional to their distance. In other words, the farther they are, the faster they are moving away from Earth. The velocity of the galaxies has been determined by their redshift, a shift of the light they emit toward the red end of the visible light spectrum. The discovery of Hubble's law is attributed to Edwin Hubble's work published in 1929.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubble Ultra-Deep Field</span> Deep-field space image

The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) is a deep-field image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, containing an estimated 10,000 galaxies. The original data for the image was collected by the Hubble Space Telescope from September 2003 to January 2004 and the first version of the image was released on March 9, 2004. It includes light from galaxies that existed about 13 billion years ago, some 400 to 800 million years after the Big Bang.

The distance modulus is a way of expressing distances that is often used in astronomy. It describes distances on a logarithmic scale based on the astronomical magnitude system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IC 1101</span> Galaxy in the constellation Virgo

IC 1101 is a class S0 supergiant (cD) lenticular galaxy at the center of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster. It has an isophotal diameter at about 123.65 to 169.61 kiloparsecs. It possesses a diffuse core which is the largest known core of any galaxy to date, and contains a supermassive black hole, one of the largest discovered. IC 1101 is located at 354.0 megaparsecs from Earth. It was discovered on 19 June 1790, by the British astronomer William Herschel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CL1358+62</span> Galaxy cluster in the constellation Draco

CL 1358+62 is a galaxy cluster located at z=0.33 redshift. Behind the cluster, lensed into a red arc is an infant galaxy that was the farthest object in the observable universe for a few months. It had a record redshift of z=4.92 and was discovered on July 31, 1997 by M. Franx and G. Illingsworth. It is located approximately 26 billion light years from Earth. Its redshift was measured by the Keck Telescope shortly after its discovery. Along with G1, another galaxy also lensed, was found to be at z=4.92. The pair of galaxies were the first things other than quasars to have the title of most distant object found, since the 1960s. The pair of galaxies remained the most distant objects known until the discovery of RD1 at z=5.34, the first object to exceed redshift 5.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UDFy-38135539</span> Distant galaxy in the constellation Fornax

UDFy-38135539 is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) identifier for a galaxy which was calculated as of October 2010 to have a light travel time of 13.1 billion years with a present proper distance of around 30 billion light-years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UDFj-39546284</span> High red-shift structure in the constellation Fornax

UDFj-39546284 is a high-redshift Lyman-break galaxy discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope in infrared Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) observations in 2009. The object, located in the Fornax constellation, was identified by G. Illingworth, R. Bouwens and the HUDF09 Team during 2009 and 2010. It was reported with a redshift of z~10 using Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescope photometric data, with later reports in 2012 suggesting a possibly higher redshift of z = 11.9 Although doubts were raised that this galaxy could instead be a low-redshift interloper with extreme spectral emission lines producing the appearance of a very high redshift source, later spectroscopic observations by the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRSpec instrument in 2022 confirmed the galaxy's high redshift to a spectroscopically confirmed estimate of z = 11.58.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MACS0647-JD</span> The farthest known galaxy from the Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis

MACS0647-JD is a galaxy with a redshift of about z = 10.7, equivalent to a light travel distance of 13.26 billion light-years. If the distance estimate is correct, it formed about 427 million years after the Big Bang.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cosmos Redshift 7</span> Galaxy in the constellation Sextans

Cosmos Redshift 7 is a high-redshift Lyman-alpha emitter galaxy. At a redshift z = 6.6, the galaxy is observed as it was about 800 million years after the Big Bang, during the epoch of reionisation. With a light travel time of 12.9 billion years, it is one of the oldest, most distant galaxies known.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EGSY8p7</span> Galaxy in the constellation Boötes

EGSY8p7 (EGSY-2008532660) is a distant galaxy in the constellation of Boötes, with a spectroscopic redshift of z = 8.68, a light travel distance of 13.2 billion light-years from Earth. Therefore, at an age of 13.2 billion years, it is observed as it existed 570 million years after the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago, using the W. M. Keck Observatory. In July 2015, EGSY8p7 was announced as the oldest and most-distant known object, surpassing the previous record holder, EGS-zs8-1, which was determined in May 2015 as the oldest and most distant object. In March 2016, Pascal Oesch, one of the discoverers of EGSY8p7, announced the discovery of GN-z11, an older and more distant galaxy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GN-z11</span> High-redshift galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major

GN-z11 is a high-redshift galaxy found in the constellation Ursa Major. It is among the farthest known galaxies from Earth ever discovered. The 2015 discovery was published in a 2016 paper headed by Pascal Oesch and Gabriel Brammer. Up until the discovery of JADES-GS-z13-0 in 2022 by the James Webb Space Telescope, GN-z11 was the oldest and most distant known galaxy yet identified in the observable universe, having a spectroscopic redshift of z = 10.957, which corresponds to a proper distance of approximately 32 billion light-years. Data published in 2024 established that the galaxy contains the most distant, and therefore earliest, black hole known in the universe, estimated at around 1.6 million solar masses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IC 1459</span> Elliptical galaxy in the constellation of Grus

IC 1459 is an elliptical galaxy located in the constellation Grus. It is located at a distance of circa 85 million light-years from Earth, which, given its apparent dimensions, means that IC 1459 is about 130,000 light-years across. It was discovered by Edward Emerson Barnard in 1892.

3MM-1 is a star-forming galaxy about 12.5 billion light-years away that is obscured by clouds of dust. It is located in the constellation of Sextans. It was first detected in spectroscopic data on rotational transitions of carbon monoxide obtained using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array from 23-24 December 2018, as detailed in an article that was published on 22 October 2019. The authors of this article described the discovery as "serendipitous", since the focus of their planned observations had been on galaxies at redshifts near 1.5 that are quiescent — i.e. do not form stars — and directly observable, yet 3MM-1 was found at a redshift of about 5.5, is forming stars and not directly observable. In the same dataset, another dust-obscured star-forming galaxy, 3MM-2, was found at a redshift of about 3.3.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">JADES-GS-z7-01-QU</span> Galaxy in the constellation Fornax

JADES-GS-z7-01-QU is a Lyman-break galaxy, first identified in 2010, located in the constellation Fornax. It formed around 700 million years after the birth of the universe, after which it suddenly stopped creating new stars. It experienced rapid star formation around 80 million years before the epoch of observation, lasting for at least 30 million years, before ending around 10-20 million years before the epoch of observation. It is the oldest and most distant "dead" galaxy so far discovered.

References

  1. ↑ "Leiden Observatory faculty directory". Leiden University. Archived from the original on 2011-03-10.
  2. ↑ "Leiden Observatory Personal Page".
  3. ↑ "Professional History". LinkedIn.com.
  4. ↑ "Professional History" (PDF).
  5. ↑ "Description of Rychard Bouwens' Research". Word Press. August 2016.
  6. ↑ "About firstgalaxies.org".
  7. ↑ Bouwens, Rychard J.; Illingworth, Garth D.; Magee, Daniel (2006). "BUCS: An Engine For Generating Realistic Imaging Data for Deep Galaxy Fields". Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems Xv. 351: 145. arXiv: astro-ph/0605729 . Bibcode:2006ASPC..351..145B.
  8. ↑ P.A. Oesch; P.D. van Dokkum; G.D. Illingworth; R.J. Bouwens; I. Momcheva; B. Holden; G. W. Roberts-Borsani; R. Smit; M. Franx; I. Labbé; V. González; D. Magee (2015). "A Spectroscopic Redshift Measurement for a Luminous Lyman Break Galaxy at z = 7.730 Using Keck/MOSFIRE". Astrophysical Journal. 804 (2): L30. arXiv: 1502.05399 . Bibcode:2015ApJ...804L..30O. doi:10.1088/2041-8205/804/2/L30. S2CID   55115344.
  9. ↑ "Astronomers set a new galaxy distance record". astronomynow.com.
  10. ↑ A. Zitrin; I. Labbe; Belli, S.; R.J. Bouwens; R.S. Ellis; G. Roberts-Borsani; D.P. Stark; P.A. Oesch; R. Smit (2015). "Lymanα Emission from a Luminous z = 8.68 Galaxy: Implications for Galaxies as Tracers of Cosmic Reionization". Astrophysical Journal. 810 (1): L12. arXiv: 1507.02679 . Bibcode:2015ApJ...810L..12Z. doi:10.1088/2041-8205/810/1/L12. S2CID   11524667.
  11. ↑ P. Oesch; G. Brammer; P.G. van Dokkum; G.D. Illingworth; R.J. Bouwens; I. Labbé; M. Franx; I. Momcheva; M.L.N. Ashby; G.G. Fazio; V. Gonzalez; B. Holden; D. Magee; R.E. Skelton; R. Smit; L.R. Spitler; M. Trenti; S.P. Willner (2016). "A Remarkably Luminous Galaxy at z=11.1 Measured with Hubble Space Telescope Grism Spectroscopy". Astrophysical Journal. 819 (2): 129. arXiv: 1603.00461 . Bibcode:2016ApJ...819..129O. doi: 10.3847/0004-637X/819/2/129 . S2CID   119262750.
  12. ↑ "Hubble Team Breaks Cosmic Distance Record". astronomynow.com.
  13. ↑ "Hubble Breaks Cosmic Distance Record". Space Telescope.
  14. 1 2 R.J. Bouwens; G.D. Illingworth; I. Labbe; P.A. Oesch; M. Trenti; C.M. Carollo; P.G. van Dokkum; M. Franx; M. Stiavelli; V. González; D. Magee; L. Bradley (2011). "A candidate redshift z ~ 10 galaxy and rapid changes in that population at an age of 500 Myr". Nature. 469 (7331): 504–507. arXiv: 0912.4263 . Bibcode:2011Natur.469..504B. doi:10.1038/nature09717. PMID   21270889. S2CID   4425674.
  15. ↑ "Astronomers Discover Oldest Galaxy Yet Seen". www.space.com. 26 January 2011.
  16. ↑ "NASA's Hubble Finds Most Distant Galaxy Candidate Ever Seen in Universe". www.nasa.gov.
  17. ↑ Mann, Adam (2011). "Oldest Galaxy is Lone Ranger". Nature. Nature News. doi: 10.1038/news.2011.47 .
  18. ↑ "Earliest Galaxy". Scientific American.
  19. ↑ Grossman, Lisa. "Hubble Finds Galaxy Beyond Key Benchmark". Wired.
  20. ↑ "Caltech-led astronomers discover galaxies near cosmic dawn". www.caltech.edu. 12 December 2012.
  21. ↑ "Prijs voor Rychard Bouwens van Sterrewacht Universiteit Leiden". omroepwest.nl. 8 May 2013.
  22. ↑ "Pastoor Schmeitsprijs voor de Sterrenkunde toegekend aan Dr. Rychard Bouwens". www.universiteitleiden.nl. 14 May 2013.
  23. ↑ "Science Prize for Dutch Astronomer". 8 May 2013.
  24. ↑ "Pastoor Schmeitsprijs". 26 October 2011.
  25. ↑ "ALMA-REBELS". sites.google.com. Retrieved 2022-12-25.
  26. ↑ "Large Programs". ALMA Science Portal at ESO. Retrieved 2022-12-25.
  27. ↑ "Rychard Bouwens granted precious research time on ALMA telescope". Leiden University. 31 July 2019. Retrieved 2022-12-25.
  28. ↑ Bouwens, R. J.; Smit, R.; Schouws, S.; Stefanon, M.; Bowler, R.; Endsley, R.; Gonzalez, V.; Inami, H.; Stark, D.; Oesch, P.; Hodge, J.; Aravena, M.; da Cunha, E.; Dayal, P.; Looze, I. de (2022-06-01). "Reionization Era Bright Emission Line Survey: Selection and Characterization of Luminous Interstellar Medium Reservoirs in the z > 6.5 Universe". The Astrophysical Journal. 931 (2): 160. arXiv: 2106.13719 . Bibcode:2022ApJ...931..160B. doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac5a4a . ISSN   0004-637X. S2CID   235652412.
  29. ↑ Inami, Hanae; Algera, Hiddo S. B.; Schouws, Sander; Sommovigo, Laura; Bouwens, Rychard; Smit, Renske; Stefanon, Mauro; Bowler, Rebecca A. A.; Endsley, Ryan; Ferrara, Andrea; Oesch, Pascal; Stark, Daniel; Aravena, Manuel; Barrufet, Laia; da Cunha, Elisabete (2022-09-01). "The ALMA REBELS Survey: dust continuum detections at z > 6.5". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 515 (3): 3126–3143. arXiv: 2203.15136 . Bibcode:2022MNRAS.515.3126I. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stac1779 . ISSN   0035-8711.
  30. ↑ Bouwens, Rychard J.; Illingworth, Garth D. (2006). "Rapid evolution of the most luminous galaxies during the first 900 million years". Nature. 443 (7108): 189–192. arXiv: astro-ph/0607087 . Bibcode:2006Natur.443..189B. doi:10.1038/nature05156. PMID   16971943. S2CID   4416389.
  31. ↑ Smit, Renske; Bouwens, Rychard J.; Carniani, Stefano; Oesch, Pascal A.; Labbé, Ivo; Illingworth, Garth D.; Van Der Werf, Paul; Bradley, Larry D.; Gonzalez, Valentino; Hodge, Jacqueline A.; Holwerda, Benne W.; Maiolino, Roberto; Zheng, Wei (2018). "Rotation in [C II]-emitting gas in two galaxies at a redshift of 6.8". Nature. 553 (7687): 178–181. arXiv: 1706.04614 . Bibcode:2018Natur.553..178S. doi:10.1038/nature24631. PMID   29323299. S2CID   205261958.
  32. ↑ Bouwens, Rychard (May 2017). "Astronomy: Quasars signpost massive galaxies". Nature. 545 (7655): 418–419. Bibcode:2017Natur.545..418B. doi: 10.1038/545418a . PMID   28541322. S2CID   205094098.
  33. ↑ Bouwens, Rychard (2018). "Distant galaxy formed stars only 250 million years after the Big Bang". Nature. 557 (7705): 312–313. Bibcode:2018Natur.557..312B. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-05114-z . PMID   29765123. S2CID   21696370.
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