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External Relations
Cardiff University
Cardiff, Wales

Contact:
Dr Robert Minchin, Robert.Minchin{at}astro.cf.ac.uk, 44-292-087-5177

14 May 2003

Astronomers map the hidden Universe

Astronomers from Cardiff University are involved in a race against
time to uncover the hidden secrets of the Universe.

The team, from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, are
completing the very first survey for cosmic hydrogen -- the primeval
gas which emerged from the Big Bang to form all the stars and
galaxies we can see today.

Since 1997 the astronomers, with their Australian colleagues, have
been using two giant radio telescopes, the 64-metre diameter dish at
Parkes in New South Wales, Australia, and the 76-metre dish at
Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, to build up an atlas of the heavens as
mapped by cosmic hydrogen. 

The survey is fundamental for two entirely different reasons.
Firstly, the night sky, in cosmic terms, is quite bright so that
structures dimmer than the sky will be invisible to optical
telescopes -- but not to the radio. Thus parts of the Invisible
Universe should come to light for the first time -- and they do.

Secondly, finding the gas left behind when the galaxies formed should 
help decode the evolution of the Universe as it expands. For instance 
the team finds, for the very first time, infantile galaxies still 
apparently coming out of pristine gas.

So many exciting and surprising discoveries are emerging from the
survey that Professor Mike Disney and his team find themselves
constantly dashing around the globe to follow them up with other
telescopes in Australia, New Mexico, Holland, Chile, the Canaries and
South Africa, to say nothing of the Hubble Space Telescope.

"We are racing against time, against man-made radio-interference
which will soon blind us to much of the cosmos for ever," said
Professor Disney. 

"We feel very privileged," he added. "We are like the early
navigators glimpsing new continents for the first time. There are
surprises and inevitably we only understand a fraction of what we
encounter. The real challenge is to distinguish what is actually
there from what we wanted to find. But none amongst us would wish to
be anywhere else." 

Members of Professor Disneys team include Hugh Lang (engineer), Dr 
Robert Minchin and Dr Erwin de Blok, Diege Garcia and Marco Grossi
(PhD students) and Thomas Targett (undergraduate student).

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