The question has been asked! What do I actually do? This is a good question, one that I have to ask myself sometimes... Part of why Astrophysics is so cool is that we end up doing some things that no-one has done before, hence having to ask myself what I'm doing! The answer to the question is a lifetime of blog posts, so you'll have to wait for that! And sadly I can't really say what I'm doing until it's been published so no-one can do my research first..... I'm not being paranoid, this actually happens and can be a problem for a lot of students. (So I can't publish anything on the blog before a paper has been published...)
Just to slake your thirsts, I have come across some interesting things over the years about the different wavelengths and what they look like...
An X-ray image is very different to the images you see in the news. Here I show a pair of galaxies first in X-ray and then in the optical. You can see that X-ray doesn't show the detail of the galaxies as much as the optical. This is because the X-ray only shows the most energetic and hottest parts of a galaxy while the optical shows the gas and star formation! So now you'll know when you see a picture in the news that perhaps your only seeing part of a galaxies story! (And I haven't even mentioned dark matter yet!!)
Just to slake your thirsts, I have come across some interesting things over the years about the different wavelengths and what they look like...
An X-ray image is very different to the images you see in the news. Here I show a pair of galaxies first in X-ray and then in the optical. You can see that X-ray doesn't show the detail of the galaxies as much as the optical. This is because the X-ray only shows the most energetic and hottest parts of a galaxy while the optical shows the gas and star formation! So now you'll know when you see a picture in the news that perhaps your only seeing part of a galaxies story! (And I haven't even mentioned dark matter yet!!)