How galaxies form

Blaauw Lecture 2016

HOW GALAXIES FORM

The Cosmological Context of the Milky Way

Rosemary Wyse

Datum: 

Woensdag 19 oktober 2016 - 20:00 tot 21:30

Locatie: 

Academiegebouw, Broerstraat 5, Groningen

Tickets: 

Toegang gratis

The Milky Way Galaxy is a typical large disc galaxy and can be used as a template for understanding how galaxies form. We can obtain much more detailed information about the stars that make up our Galaxy than we can for more distant galaxies. Stars retain memory of the conditions in which they formed and stars of mass like the Sun live for essentially the age of the Universe. We can thus use old stars nearby to explore the early epochs of galaxy evolution, in complementary way to direct observations of galaxies at high redshift - at large cosmic depth, which show the galaxies in their infancy. How do observations of stars in the Milky Way and in its satellite galaxies shed light on fundamental questions such as the nature of the dark matter that dominates how galaxies form and evolve? And what does it teach us about the masses of newborn stars in the early Universe?