November 6th, 2008

Davide Lazzati lead discussion on the paper "Dust Extinction in High-z Galaxies with GRB Afterglow Spectroscopy - The 2175Å Feature at z=2.45," by Eliasdottir et al, 2008. This paper reports on the detection of the 2175 Angstrom dust feature, normally only seen in the local group of galaxies, in the afterglow spectrum of a GRB at z=2.45. Although the source of the 2175 feature is still unknown, this suggests that the conditions necessary to form dust with this absorption feature, which may be due to high metallicity in the host galaxy, were present in the early universe in at least some galaxies.

last edited 2008-11-07 17:35:58 by BrianWilliams