Marijn Franx

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marijn Franx (2010)

Marijn Franx (* 1960 ) is a Dutch astronomer who studies infrared astronomy of galaxies in the early universe. He is a professor at the observatory at Leiden University .

Life

Franx studied astronomy at the University of Leiden with a diploma in 1984 and a doctorate with distinction in 1988. As a post-doctoral student he was a Harvard Junior Fellow and Hubble Fellow and professor of astronomy at the University of Groningen from 1993 to 1998 before becoming a professor in Leiden.

He observed, among others, with the Hubble Space Telescope , the Keck Telescope , Gemini Telescope and the Very Large Telescope in the Paranal Observatory .

CL 1358 + 62

In 1988 he and his group discovered counter-rotation of galaxy nuclei in elliptical galaxies and in 1997 he briefly held the distance record for a galaxy, CL1358 + 62 with a redshift of z = 4.92. It had been discovered through a gravitational lensing effect with Hubble and, unlike the previously known far-away objects, was not a quasar . In 1998 it was replaced by RD 1 with z = 5.34 ( Hyron Spinrad and others). Around ten years later, Franx and colleagues examined galaxies with redshift 7 to 8 and in 2010 they set a new record of z = 8.55 with UDFy-38135539 , corresponding to an age of around 13.1 billion years (or 600 million years after the Big Bang), when the galaxies were still surrounded by dense hydrogen clouds that were reionized some 100 million years later by the UV light of new stars. Candidates with z = 9 to 10 were also examined around 2013 and will be investigated in more detail with the next generation of telescopes.

The observations of early galaxies were the result of Hubble Extreme Deep Field (XDF), which Franx was involved in. In 2009, the Hubble telescope was completely overhauled, including a WFC 3 (Wide Field Camera 3) infrared camera. Other new telescopes Franx is using to research early galaxies are the VISTA infrared telescope at the Paranal Observatory and the planned James Webb Space Telescope . In addition to early galaxies, he also researches the subsequent evolution of galaxies. Franx worked with Garth Illingworth , Rychard Bouwens, Ivo Labbé, Pieter van Dokkum , among others .

He was a senior scientist in the Faint Infrared Extragalactic Survey (FIRES) on the Very Large Telescope .

In 2010 he received the Spinoza Prize and an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. He is a member of the Dutch Academy of Sciences.

On August 31, 2012, the asteroid (15168) Marijnfranx was named after him.

Web links

Commons : Marijn Franx  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Garth Illingworth, Daniel Kelson, Pieter van Dokkum, Kim-Vy Tran: A Pair of Lensed Galaxies at z = 4.92 in the Field of CL 1358 + 62, Astroph. J. Lett., Volume 486, 1997, L 75, bibcode : 1997ApJ ... 486L..75F
  2. ↑ Bouwens, Illingworth, Franx et al. a., Discovery of z ~ 8 Galaxies in the HUDF from ultra-deep WFC3 / IR Observations, Astroph. J. 709, 2009, L133, arxiv : 0909.1803 . The record holder before that was a gamma ray flash from 2009 with z = 8.2.
  3. ↑ http://www.eso.org/public/germany/news/eso1041/
  4. ↑ Oesch, Bouwens, Franx, Illingworth a. a. The Most Luminous z ~ 9-10 Galaxy Candidates yet Found, Astroph. J., Preprint 2013, arxiv : 1309.2280
  5. ↑ Illingworth et al. a., The HST eXtreme Deep Field XDF, Astroph. J., 2013, arxiv : 1305.1931
  6. ↑ Fires
personal data
SURNAME Franx, Marijn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH 1960