Astronomy on Tap: Star Clusters (online vanuit Leiden)

Op maandag 27 juli om 20.00 uur vertellen Alice Zocchi (ESA) en Stella Reini (Universiteit Leiden) het publiek van Astronomy on Tap Leiden alles over sterrenhopen. Het programma is in het Engels en wordt live gestreamd via Youtube.

Alice Zocchi: "Looking at old stellar clusters with new eyes"
Alice is currently a research fellow based at ESTEC, the European Space Agency's technology centre in the Netherlands, but she will soon move to the University of Vienna, where she will work as a postdoctoral researcher. She studies how stars move within the globular clusters that are hosted in the Milky Way. These are very old and very dense groups of stars which are held together by their own gravity, and which look like round swarms of bees. By looking at how stars move within these clusters, we could get clues about how they formed and about the properties of the Universe at that time. In her talk, she will tell us about how complex and intriguing these systems appear once we look at them in detail with space- and ground-based telescopes. Fun fact: Alice was a scout until about 10 years ago, but she still remembers the Morse code by heart.

Stella Reino: "Stellar streams: a trail of clues left by shredded stellar clusters"
Stella is from Tallinn, Estonia and obtained her Master’s degree at University College London in the UK. Currently, she is a PhD Candidate at Leiden University studying the Milky Way galaxy with stellar streams. Stellar streams are the remnants of globular clusters or dwarf galaxies that have been shredded by the gravity of the Milky Way. After being torn from their original cluster, the stars settle on similar orbits, appearing as an arc of stars in the sky. In her talk, she will discuss the clues these stream stars hold about the shape and size of the Milky Way and how we can extract this information to shed light on the dark matter content of our home Galaxy.

All ages and backgrounds are welcome! As always, we will have fun games where you can win cool science prizes.

More info at www.astronomyontap.nl