Seminar: Tracing the dark with light - constraining dark matter in ultra-faint galaxies with MUSE

Jarle Brinchmann, Director of Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto (CAUP), Portugal

Tid og sted: 4. okt. 2019 14:15 – 15:00, Milky Way auditorium i 2. etasje på Ullevål stadion, Institutt for teoretisk astrofysikk

Jarle Brinchmann, Director of Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto (CAUP). Credits: Jarle Brinchmann

The Multi Object Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) has revolutionised dense field spectroscopy by providing spectra of every 0.2"x0.2" over a field of view of 1'x1'. Here I will quickly review a few very recent results from MUSE spanning from exo-planets to Ly-a emitters via globular clusters, showing the power of this instrument to obtain spectra of faint objects. I will then present the first results from MUSE-Faint, a 100hr survey with MUSE of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies within the Milky Way halo. These are the most dark matter dominated objects we know and I will report on how we can use the dynamics of their stellar content to place the best current constraints on MACHO dark matter and present preliminary work on constraining the dark matter profile in these systems and thence the nature of dark matter in these galaxies.

This colour image shows the Hubble Ultra Deep Field region, a tiny but much-studied region in the constellation of Fornax, as observed with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. This data set has allowed astronomers not only to measure distances for far more of these galaxies than before — a total of 1600 — but also to find out much more about each of them. Credits: ESO/MUSE HUDF collaboration

Publisert 30. sep. 2019 17:46 - Sist endret 30. sep. 2019 18:07