Jeff Cooke

Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology
PO Box 218, Mail number H30, Hawthorn, VIC 3122 Australia
office: +61 3 9214 5392 -- fax: +61 3 9214 8797 -- email: jcooke@astro.swin.edu.au

 

Extragalactic Observational Astronomer

Main areas of research:

High redshift supernovae
High redshift galaxy interactions and environment Interstellar and intergalactic gas

Press releases:
Extremely distant super-luminous supernovae
The most distant supernovae
The massive merging galaxy LBG-2377

Check this out (I think I recognize #1)!
Top 10 Most Important Supernovae


Brief descriptions of a few of the projects that have been keeping me busy (the links are in various states of completion):

SUPERNOVAE
  Detection of z > 2 supernovae
  Super-luminous supernovae and the first stars
  Type Ia supernovae and cosmology

GALAXIES
  Lyman break galaxy interactions at z ~ 3
  Broadband selection of Lyman alpha emitters
  Spectral correlation functions and environment
  Bright galaxies at z ~ 4; the One-Degree Deep survey
  Identifying key contributors to cosmic reionization

INTERSTELLAR AND INTERGALACTIC GAS
  Mass of damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs)
  Galaxies and MgII absorption-line systems



THE LATEST: I will be reporting our most recent discoveries of super-luminous supernovae, two which may be examples of pair-instability supernovae, at the First Stars IV conference in Kyoto, Japan. The supernovae are at z = 2.0, 2.5, and 3.9. At these high redshifts, they are beginning to probe the regime of the first generation of stars to form after the Big Bang!

Click here to access the ADS link displaying a list of articles describing some of my work.

Welcome to my office

A false color (negative) image of interacting Lyman break galaxies (termed LBG-2377) comprise the brightest LBG at z ~ 3 known to date (Cooke et al. 2008). These "embryo" galaxies show evidence that they are merging and provide information on the physical properties and formation processes of galaxies about 11.4 billion years ago, when the universe was only 15% its current age.

LBGs, like those above, are visible because they are undergoing a burst of star formation. One cause of this burst may be the merging of galaxies, as is the case for the much closer galaxies NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 (image to the right) known as the Antennae Galaxies.

The search for z ~ 2 Type IIn supernovae in the Deep component of the CFHTLS has spectroscopically confirmed 10 to date, with more to come. The images directly to the right illustrate the first step in finding these distant objects. Each frame shows the same tiny section of a large one-square-degree image over three consecutive years and is centered on a z ~ 2 galaxy that was discovered to host a supernova. The frames consist of an entire year's worth of images stacked together to better reveal these faint objects. Below the three images is the 2004 image with the constant light from the galaxies subtracted away, revealing the supernova. The 10 supernovae lay between z = 1.9 - 2.4. Deep spectroscopy with the Keck telescopes is used for confirmation and study. With these discoveries, we are witnessing light from explosions that happened nearly 11 billion years ago. Such detections are crucial in understanding early stellar and galaxy formation processes.

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The Hubble Space Telescope

The Milky Way can be seen, as well as two of our closest companion galaxies, the Large and Small Magellenic Clouds, in this long-exposure image of the 4 meter telescope at the CTIO located in the Southern Hemisphere (Chile).