Join us for a colloquium with Dr. Alyson Brooks from Rutgers University.

Title: “Darkness on the Edge of Town: Interpreting Newly Discovered Dwarf Galaxies”
Abstract: New observational surveys (e.g., Rubin's LSST, WALLABY) are enabling the discovery of hundreds of nearby dwarf galaxies.  Are we theoretically ready for what the surveys will find?  The past decade has seen tremendous progress in simulating realistic dwarf galaxies, a feat first made possible by researchers in the UW Astronomy Department.  Given their shallow potential wells, dwarfs are an excellent probe of star formation and feedback processes. In this talk, I'll outline a campaign to simulate the largest suite of dwarf galaxies to date, in environments both near the Milky Way and further afield.  These high resolution, cosmological simulations are probing dwarf galaxy formation from LMC-mass scales down into the regime of the ultra-faints for the first time.  I will highlight some of the first predictions at the low-mass edge of galaxy formation, and return to lessons learned from the first realistic simulations of dwarf galaxies.

You can attend this event in-person in PAA A102 or via this Zoom Link: washington.zoom.us…