New radio astronomy survey peers through cosmic dust to investigate the Milky Way

Pathfinder (K Cleary, CalTech) - The first results from a mammoth astronomy project aimed at mapping out the origins of our 13.8 billion year old universe have been announced today. An international team of astronomers from around the globe taking part in the project named, COMAP (CO Mapping Array Project) will offer us a new glimpse into this epoch of galaxy assembly, helping to answer questions about what really caused the universe ' s rapid increase in the production of stars. Led by CalTech and involving researchers from The University of Manchester , the first science results from the project have just been published in seven papers The Astrophysical Journal. Based on observations taken one year into a planned five-year survey, COMAP set upper limits on how much cold gas must be present in galaxies at the epoch studied, including the ones that are normally too faint and dusty to see. While the project has not yet made a direct detection of the carbon monoxide signal, these early results demonstrate that it is on-track to do so by the end of the initial five-year survey and to ultimately paint the most comprehensive picture yet of the universe ' s'history of star formation. Alongside the main cosmology goals of the telescope, scientists in Manchester have been focused on using the telescope to make new maps of the Milky Way. Improving on work by the WMAP and Planck space telescopes, the COMAP Galactic Plane Survey maps the Galaxy at a resolution of 4.5 arcminutes, around seven times finer than Planck.