John Salzer - The H-Alpha Dot Survey - Where Serendipity and Science Intersect

Speaker: John Salzer, Astronomy Department, Indiana University Bloomington

Abstract: I describe the H-Alpha Dot Survey, an ongoing program that utilizes narrow-band images taken for other purposes to discover a population of faint emission-line sources. While the H-alpha Dots appear to represent a random assortment of extragalactic systems, they are in fact a highly differentiated collection of strong-lined galaxies at a range of redshifts. I give examples of how the H-Alpha Dots can be used to explore a number of important problems in modern astronomy.