Director of Outreach and Public Engagement speaking at the IOP

Olivia Keenan, our Director of Outreach and Public Engagement, is giving a talk on her PhD work at the Institute of Physics on the 20th of March. The talk is free and open to all. Refreshments will be served from 6pm, with the talk starting at 6:30.

Location: Institute of Physics, 37 Caledonian Road, London, N1 9BU


Image Credit & Copyright: Malcolm Park (North York Astronomical Association)

Where are all the Galaxies? The Missing Satellite Problem

State of the art computer simulations of our Universe currently over predict the number of dwarf galaxies by a factor of 10. As astronomers, we need to understand why this discrepancy has come about, and whether it is due to problems with simulations, observations, or both. One potential solution is that these galaxies could be hidden, ‘dark galaxies’. Dark galaxies are galaxies which are gas dominated, with few to no stars. There have been many dark galaxy candidates, however, so far none of these has been confirmed. Another solution is that the galaxies are star dominated but extremely faint and hard to detect in crowded, large field surveys. If so these galaxies could be detected using a combination of their physical properties to separate them from background field galaxies. In this talk I will discuss work on this topic, and how this has contributed to understanding the missing satellite problem.