What Happens when Galaxies Collide

Our Milky Way galaxy is set on a crash collision course with our neighbor Andromeda, but don’t worry: we have a few billion years to prepare. What will happen to the gas, dust, and stars that make up these galaxies? What will our night sky look like? In this talk, Dr Stierwalt will describe what we know about galaxy collisions from multiwavelength observations and simulations. Dr Stierwalt will share insights from her own research using the James Webb Space Telescope into how these galaxy mergers grow their central black holes and the role smaller dwarf galaxies play in this process. She will also highlight why she’s so excited about the upcoming surveys with the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope and the Vera Rubin Observatory.

Dr Sabrina Stierwalt is an extragalactic astrophysicist who researches how galaxies form and evolve. She uses multi-wavelength observations from the X-ray to the radio taken with telescopes in space and on the ground all over the world. She leads the NSF-funded program TiNy Titans, the first systematic study of the gas dynamics and star formation in interacting dwarf galaxies. Sabrina earned her BA from UC Berkeley and her PhD from Cornell University. She currently co-chairs NASA’s Cosmic Origins Program Analysis Group Executive Committee and serves on the board of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. She works to make science and the stars more accessible through a program to bring an inflatable planetarium to communities that have been historically excluded in STEM. You can find her featured on PBS Nova and via her numerous articles in Scientific American. She currently explores the universe as an Assistant Professor of Physics at Occidental College in the heart of Los Angeles.

Speaker: Sabrina Stierwalt, Occidental College