Institute for Advanced Study Informal Astrophysics Seminar - Special Date

This informal seminar will highlight results obtained recently with the transformational instruments MUSE and GRAVITY on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at Paranal. For MUSE, the focus will be on an ongoing study of the internal dynamics, stellar populations and slope of the initial mass function of 33 bright galaxies within the virial radius of the Fornax cluster. The results connect the properties of the stellar populations to the internal dynamical structure. They provide insight into the structure of the cluster, which is dominated by the gravitational potential of the central galaxy NGC1399, and serve as a benchmark for (simulations of) the assembly and evolution of galaxies in a cluster environment. GRAVITY’s interferometric measurements with the four 8m telescopes include the detection of the gravitational redshift and relativistic transverse Doppler motion in the highly-elliptical 16-year-period orbit of the star S2 around Sgr A*, the detection of looped motion of flares in Sgr A* at 30% of the speed of light near the innermost stable circular orbit of the central black hole, the measurement of the size of the broad-line region in 3C273 as well as a direct spectroscopic measurement of the properties of the atmosphere of a bright young planet orbiting HR8799e.