The NYU Abu Dhabi galaxy research team has joined an international project that is helping scientists learn more about how stars are formed and how galaxies change over time.
ABU DHABI: Researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi are part of a major international astronomy project that is helping scientists understand how galaxies are formed and how they change over time.
The project is called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey V (SDSS-V), one of the world’s biggest space research programmes. Its latest data release includes information from the Local Volume Mapper, which studies the Milky Way and nearby galaxies in much greater detail than before.
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Instead of taking normal space pictures, the survey studies light in thousands of different colours. This helps scientists learn more about the gas between stars, including its temperature, movement and what it is made of. The information helps explain how stars are born and how they affect the galaxies around them.
The NYU Abu Dhabi galaxy research team has been working on the project since 2023.
Research Scientist Ivan Katkov helped prepare the data and also created LVMvis, a free online tool that lets scientists, students and the public explore the observations through a web browser.
Katkov said today’s space missions collect huge amounts of information, so making that data easy to explore is just as important as collecting it. He said LVMvis allows anyone to look at galaxies and nebulae and better understand what the telescope has recorded.
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Associate Professor Joseph Gelfand said making the data freely available will help researchers around the world make new discoveries faster. He added that understanding how stars interact with the gas around them is an important part of learning how galaxies grow and evolve.
Another NYU Abu Dhabi researcher, Ahmad Nemer, is using the data to study what happens when stars explode. His work focuses on how the shock waves from these explosions move through the gas in space and how they shape the surrounding environment.
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey brings together hundreds of researchers from more than 70 institutions in 13 countries. Since 2003, it has shared its data with scientists around the world to support new discoveries in astronomy.
Today, the NYU Abu Dhabi galaxy research team is the only institution from the Arab world taking part in the current SDSS-V programme, showing the university’s growing role in international space research.
Babar Siddiqui is the Features Editor at TheBrewNews.com, where he covers stories spanning the environment, culture, and technology. A naturally curious storyteller with an adventurous spirit, he is passionate about exploring ideas that shape the world around us. Beyond the newsroom, Babar finds inspiration in nature, embracing its quiet moments as a source of reflection and creativity.
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