Trish Henning, Professor

 
Research Interests:

My current work centers on mapping the large-scale structure of the Universe where it lies hidden by our own Milky Way galaxy.

Why work in such an obscure region? The lack of convergence of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation dipole with the inferred gravitational acceleration caused by the inhomogeneous distribution of galaxies in the local Universe means we must be overlooking some important mass structures. For instance, the supposed "Great Attractor", a supercluster-sized mass overdensity inferred from galaxy flows, lies behind our own Galaxy.

I use radiotelescopes in the northern and southern hemispheres to conduct surveys for (optically) hidden galaxies, and involve undergraduate and graduate students in the discovery and follow-up study of these newly-recognized galaxies.