David Hogg (New York University)
Date: Thu. October 31st, 2024, 4:00 pm-5:00 pmLocation: Rockefeller 301
Tracing orbits and measuring dark matter with stellar and dynamical invariants
Dynamical times in the Milky Way are measured in units of tens of millions of years; how will we ever see an orbit? The surface abundances (element abundances) of a star are (nearly) invariant quantities, as are the dynamical actions in any integrable potential. We combine these ideas with Orbital Torus Imaging, a new way to precisely measure stellar orbits from kinematic and abundance data. We are using data from the SDSS APOGEE and ESA Gaia instruments to measure the acceleration field and dark matter distribution in the Milky Way. I will show results so far and discuss the future of this kind of work, which can be extended to the study of non-equilibrium and chaotic stellar systems.