ITC Colloquium
Date and Time
Location
This week's ITC Colloquium is presented by Jason Hunt from the University of Surrey.
Our Galaxy in Motion: Ripples, Ridges and Spirals in the Milky Way
Data from ESA’s Gaia mission has revolutionized Galactic astronomy, providing an unprecedented view of the Solar neighborhood and beyond. However, while it provides us a great opportunity to transform our understanding of the Milky Way, it has also highlighted how far from equilibrium our Galaxy is. Large scale ripples in the Galactic disc, and a spiral pattern in vertical position vs. velocity are signatures of our Galaxy’s past interaction with perturbing influences such as merging dwarf galaxies, or deviations from symmetry in the halo, yet interpreting them is made challenging by similar signatures which arise from the influence of internal substructure such as the Galactic bar and spiral arms. We dissect and analyze these disequilibrium features in both the Gaia data and high resolution N-body and hydrodynamic galaxy simulations to learn about the structure and history of our Galaxy.