The Deep Extragalactic Visible Legacy Survey, DEVILS, has released its initial data and a series of recent publications explaining how a galaxy’s location in the Universe can significantly influence its evolution.
The survey combines data from a wide range of international and space-based telescopes to investigate various aspects of astrophysics by analysing hundreds of thousands of galaxies.
Project lead Associate Professor Luke Davies, from The University of Western Australia node of ICRAR, said the work represented the culmination of a decade’s worth of planning, observations and data analysis – offering a new level of detail in our understanding of galaxies in the distant Universe.
The DEVILS survey is unique in that it is the first of its kind to explore the detailed aspects of the distant Universe. It focuses on galaxies that existed up to five billion years ago, and
examines how these galaxies have changed to the present day.
From this new approach, A/Professor Davies and his team have found that where a galaxy lives strongly influences its shape, size and growth rate in the distant Universe.
This data will allow researchers to identify the number of stars in a galaxy, understand ongoing star formation, and analyse their visual appearance, shapes and structures. They can then compare these properties between galaxies in the present day Universe to galaxies that existed around five billion years ago and determine how galaxies are changing in time.
The DEVILS paper was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.