Stephanie Kate Pointon

Alumni

Swinburne University of Technology

Biography

I study the structure of the circumgalactic medium of low redshift galaxies using quasar line absorption. The longer version: If you assume that galaxies start out life with a certain amount of gas and don't accumulate any more throughout their life, then there is a limit on how many stars they can form. At this time in the universe that would mean that there would be no new stars. This is not the case which leads to the idea that galaxies are surrounded by a large gaseous halo which feeds into them to create new stars while also collecting expelled gas which has been thrown out by supernova. I'm investigating the structure and other properties of this halo.