Judith Irwin

Interstellar Medium in Galaxies; Disk-Halo Connection, Galaxy Outflows

Judith Irwin's research focusses on studies of the interstellar medium (ISM) in our own and other nearby galaxies. Of particular interest are the relationships between a galaxy's ISM and the surrounding intergalactic environment. Many spiral galaxies, for example, show extensive gas and dust in discrete features and halos around the stellar disk. This research attempts to determine the origin of the observed features, provide physical parameters for them, and determine the outcome of the activity. This research primarily uses the world's radio telescopes. Graduate students have gone to, or used data from, the Very Large Array in the USA, the Giant Metre-Wave Radio Telescope in India, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, the Nobeyama mm-Wave array in Japan, the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico, and the space-based Infra-Red Satellite Observatory and XMM Newton.