Thijs van der Hulst (Kapteyn Institute)

Thijs van der Hulst Colloquium: The Void Galaxy Survey

Marsfield Lecture Theatre

Abstract

The Void Galaxy Survey: exploring the loneliest galaxies in the Universe

The "Cosmic Web" harbours a range of structures and densities: at one extreme one finds galaxy clusters, the most massive, virialized dense conglomerates of thousands of galaxies, and at the other extreme there are the voids, occupying most of the volume in the universe with sizes in the range of 20-50 h^-1 Mpc, sparsely filled with an occasional galaxy or small group. As the evolutionary timescale in voids is long and extreme processes related to high galaxy density (ram pressure and tidal stripping for example) presumably absent, voids are ideal pristine environments to study galaxy structure and evolution. The Void Galaxy Survey has this aim and in this talk I present the results we obtained thus far from a multiwavelength study comprising UV, optical, Halpha, NIR and HI imaging of 60 void galaxies chosen from a sample of 250 void galaxies selected from the SDSS. I will address morphology, star formation properties, and gas content and make a comparison with similar size galaxies in other environments.