Dr Heather Morrison (Case Western Reserve University)

Star streams in the Milky Way Halo - Dr Heather Morrison Colloquium

ATNF Marsfield Lecture Theatre

Abstract

The last 10-20 years has seen a profound shift in views of how the
Galaxy's halo formed. The idea of a monolithic early collapse of a
single system (Eggen, Lynden-Bell and Sandage 1962) has been replaced
by observations and simulations of structure formation which imply
that we should see clear evidence of hierarchical formation processes
in nearby galaxies. Recent studies of our Galaxy, made possible by
large-scale CCD surveys such as SDSS and 2MASS, have revealed evidence
of tidal debris in the outer halo of the Milky Way. I will review
streams associated with known Milky Way satellites and star streams
whose progenitors are still unknown, and discuss how the streams can
be used to study the Milky Way's dark halo. This will include results
from our ongoing pencil-beam halo survey, the Spaghetti survey.