Speaker's Night: Observation of galaxies in the era of 3D spectroscopy (ONLINE)

Speaker: Ismaël Moumen, Université Laval/CFHT

The observation of galaxies has experienced a revolutionary boom in recent decades. While they were being described as nebulae objects in the epoch of Charles Messier and William Herschel in the 18th century, today, we have telescopes and instruments that can resolve even the smallest detail in nearby galaxies. In particular, in the last twenty years, the technological advancement of integral field spectrographs, commonly known as IFS for "Integral Field Spectrograph," has enabled us to observe the two spatial dimensions and the one spectral dimension of an object simultaneously. This means that for an extended object such as a nearby galaxy – the topic of this presentation – we are now able to study the physical, chemical, and dynamic properties of gas and stars for every pixel in the image. These properties make it possible to plot better evolutionary scenarios of galaxies by giving more quantitative constraints to models of the formation and evolution of galaxies.

In this talk, Ismaël Moumen will present the evolution of our understanding of light, 3D spectroscopy techniques, and how we can use these new observation techniques to understand the physics of the emission nebulae (star-forming regions, supernova remnants, and planetary nebulae) in nearby galaxies.

Who can attend: Everyone
Fee: Free
Registration: Not required
Organized by: RASC, Toronto Centre
Link: https://www.youtube.com/rasctoronto/live