Leading the first of the PhD student talks, Nicky Agius, a final year student gave a CARD on dust in Early type galaxies. She discussed the various instrumentation and telescopes currently available in two consortia, H-Atlas and GAMA, which she has used to probe the effect of dust.
Nicky gave an overview of why ETGs should be considered as exciting as spiral galaxies, and went on to explain that the idea that “Red and Dead” with no star formation is incorrect. Two samples were shown, one of dusty ETGs and ones void of dust, and compared and contrasted the two.
She concluded that sub-mm detected ETGs have lower concentration and Sersic index, with bluer optical and UV colours, yet the mass ranges of the two samples were similar. Dustier ETGs occupy sparser environments and the SFRs range from 0.002 to 10 M_sol per year.
Nicky’s talk was the third in the summer series lead by both staff and students. The timetable can be found here on the JHI webpage.