Nathaniel Starkman (MIT)
Date: Tue. November 5th, 2024, 11:30 am-12:30 pmLocation: Foldy Room, Rock 221
Stream Members Only: Data-Driven Characterization of Stellar Streams for Inference on the Galactic Potential
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains a variety of stellar structures whose dynamics are wonderfully sensitive to the matter distribution of the Galaxy. Among these structures are stellar streams – remnants of smaller galaxies and star clusters disrupted by the Milky Way’s gravitational pull. By modeling these streams, we can infer details about the underlying gravitational field, giving insight into the distribution and properties of dark matter. This talk presents a new approach, combining work building new methods to characterize stellar streams, with new computational modeling tools, to better understand how the dark matter halo of our galaxy is shaped.