Fundación Galileo Galilei - INAF Telescopio Nazionale Galileo 28°45'14.4N 17°53'20.6W 2387.2m A.S.L.

Seminars at FGG

Ultra Faint Galaxy Companions of the Milky Way

Speaker: Alistair Walker (Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory)

Date and time: 2016-04-14 12:30

In the past year deep imaging surveys, primarily with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the CTIO Blanco 4m telescope, have discovered over 20 ultra faint companions to the Milky Way, of which several have already been confirmed to be galaxies by follow-up spectroscopy. These galaxies are the most dark-matter dominated structures known, and chemically the least evolved. I will describe the observations and discuss the importance of these discoveries.