John Bally
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Gas flowing into and out of galaxy centers drives how galaxies grow. It forms new stars, feeds central supermassive black holes, and is blasted out in energetic outflows.
- Fields
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Physics
- Topics
Galactic center
Milky Way
Central Molecular Zone
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Map molecular gas across the entire Milky Way Central Molecular Zone at high resolution with the ALMA telescope as part of the ACES survey, tracing gas motions with more than a dozen molecular tracers.
- Build a census and catalog of diffuse and dense molecular gas and protostars across four orders of magnitude in size scale in the Galactic center.
- Construct a complete kinematic model of gas flow through the Central Molecular Zone to measure rates of inflow, outflow, star formation and accretion toward the central supermassive black hole.
More about the research
The center of our own Milky Way is the nearest place to watch this cycle up close. Here stars form in clouds of molecular gas whose pressure helps regulate star formation.
Why it matters
This work adds basic understanding of how gas flows, star formation and black hole feeding are connected in galaxy centers. Measuring these rates in the Milky Way's core could inform models of how all galaxy nuclei grow and change over time.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Adam Ginsburg
University of Florida, FL·Astronomy & Astrophysics·Early-career
Measure how fast and how much gas flows from parsec-scale clouds into ~1000 AU cores across 259 star-forming clumps in the ALMA Panta Rei survey, using dense-gas and infall/outflow molecular tracers.
Kate Rowlands
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Map recent star-formation histories in nearby galaxies using full spectral fitting of KILOGAS data, and compare them with current interstellar gas to see how star formation depends on available gas.
Farhad Yusef-Zadeh
Northwestern University, IL·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Determine the magnetic field orientation of Sgr A*'s variable emission and relate it to the accretion flow's spin axis and the jet-like feature, using full-Stokes polarization analysis of expanding synchrotron hotspots.
The school
University of Colorado Boulder: 36 labs on PI Pages, $718M a year on research, 447 research doctorates a year.
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