Katherine Suess
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Young galaxies like our Milky Way actively form stars, but many galaxies eventually stop and simply age. This shutdown, called quenching, usually takes billions of years.
- Fields
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Physics
- Topics
galaxy evolution
quenching
star formation
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Measure dust and cold gas masses in about 50 post-starburst galaxies, which recently ended star formation, using multi-wavelength telescope data.
- Assess how often these quenched galaxies host active galactic nuclei, bright black-hole-powered centers, and measure star formation hidden by dust.
- Extend the team's spectroscopic survey selection methods to identify galaxies that quenched star formation on slower timescales at low redshift.
More about the research
Some galaxies, though, cut off star formation abruptly. Why some galaxies quench fast while others do not is a key question about how galaxies change over cosmic time. This collaborative project, shared between Texas A&M University and the University of Colorado Boulder, studies galaxies that recently ended their final burst of star formation.
Why it matters
This is basic research on how galaxies stop forming stars. Measuring the gas, dust, black hole activity and hidden star formation in recently quenched galaxies adds understanding of why some galaxies shut down quickly. It could eventually inform broader models of how galaxies like the Milky Way change over the last half of cosmic history.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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.
Caitlin Casey
University of California-Santa Barbara, CA·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Characterize the thermal dust emission of galaxies across cosmic time using diverse far-infrared and millimeter (FIR/mm) observational datasets.
Adi Foord
University of Maryland-Baltimore County, MD·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Determine how often supermassive black holes merge by using AI to identify galaxy mergers and dual active galactic nuclei (pairs of feeding black holes) in large imaging surveys, and relate these rates to gravitational wave observations.
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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