Astronomers have long suspected that some of the most luminous starburst galaxies in the high-redshift universe, which are forming stars hundred or thousands of times more vigorously than our Milky Way, are almost completely hidden at visible wavelengths by the effects of dust. Over the past decade, the first surveys at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths have uncovered a large and cosmologically important population of these objects. So-called submillimeter galaxies likely represent systems in transition from gas-rich spiral galaxies to massive 'red and dead' ellipticals by way of collisions between galaxies that drive a powerful nuclear starburst. The Submillimeter Array provides unique access to high-resolution imaging in the submillimeter: an order of magnitude improvement over the instruments that first discovered these extreme systems. This enables accurate positions from which we can identify multiwavelength counterparts and study submillimeter galaxies in detail, and size measurements of the far-infrared morphology from which we can explore the engine powering their tremendous luminosity.

CfA:

Josh Younger, Giovanni Fazio, David Wilner, Jiasheng Huang, Mark Gurwell, Matt Ashby,
Glen Petitpas, Melanie Krips

ASIAA:

Daisuke Iono