Mapping 21cm Neutral Hydrogen with Radio Telescope

[JohnnyTheFox]

This semester I'll be doing a lab project using a radio telescope to map out 21cm neutral Hydrogen in the galaxy to make a nice big image of it. (First proper hands on experiment ).

Anyway that's the basic idea of it but I'm hoping in it to try to find something more specific in it. I've only just started reading into it but is there any interesting properties to go looking for in it? What can it tell us about the galaxy? The rotation curve is part of another experiment so I don't want to go too into that.

Mapping it all is the main part but I'd like to have something more to say about it. Suggestions all very welcome!

 

[hellfire]

Just throwing some ideas: you may want to study the power spectrum of the brightness temperature and its distribution, that can tell you something about the properties of the intergalactic medium, or you may want to study the galactic warp, that can tell you about galactic dynamics.