I'm losing my mind over here ...
please go read this white paper if you haven't yet (even if acrobat would like to save you the mental effort): arxiv.org/abs/2602.10181
From Veronika Dornan @dornanv.bsky.social : Can galaxy interactions help young and old stars in spiral arms get to know each other? These authors’ simulations may have an answer! ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️ 🧪
astrobites.org/2026/02/02/a...
From Veronika Dornan @dornanv.bsky.social : Reticulum II? More like Reticulum TWO distinct periods of star formation! Or at least that’s what new spectroscopic observations indicate. ⚛️🔭☄🧪
astrobites.org/2026/01/17/r...
From Veronika Dornan @dornanv.bsky.social : Like a bouncer at a nightclub, JWST is trying to figure out if some star clusters are really as old as they say they are… ⚛️🔭☄🧪
astrobites.org/2025/11/25/s...
From Veronika Dornan @dornanv.bsky.social : You really have to tip your hat to the authors of today’s bite, who closely studied the dynamics and metallicities of the globular clusters of M104. 🔭✨☄️
astrobites.org/2025/10/16/m...
Me studying for comps
From Veronika Dornan @dornanv.bsky.social : It’s an itty bitty teeny weeny ultra faint dwarf galaxy-ni! Today’s bite talks about the discovery of the faintest galaxy in the Andromeda system! 🔭✨☄️
astrobites.org/2025/09/01/p...
From Veronika Dornan @dornanv.bsky.social : You know the saying: “when gas-rich galaxies collide, young massive star clusters will soon reside” … well maybe you’ll know the saying after reading this astrobite! 🔭✨☄️
astrobites.org/2025/07/23/y...
Thanks! Extragalactically this is very hard on a GC-by-GC basis, but within the Milky Way where we have dynamical and chemical information we have actually already mapped out a lot of our galaxy's merger tree! You may be interested in this astrobite on the topic: astrobites.org/2021/05/04/g...
The big takeaway: galaxy mergers can affect GC systems and in turn studying GC systems can help us study galaxy evolution. Major mergers can noticeably affect the properties of galaxies' GC systems and where they sit on scaling relations.
#extragalactic #astronomy
In addition, that correlation was driven by the *red* GCs specifically, the blue GCs didn't have the same correlation. Since red GCs tend to be formed in massive galaxies and blue GCs in smaller satellites, this result is likely driven by a few major galaxy mergers rather than many minor mergers.
When comparing the steepness of those GC system profiles to where the galaxies sit on the GC system mass - total galaxy mass relation we found that the steepness of those GC system profiles correlated to how offset their host galaxies were on that relation.
For 16 of these galaxies we had colour information and could determine the profiles for the red and blue GCs separately. As expected, the red GCs tend to have steeper profiles and the blue GCs tend to have shallower profiles.
We determined the globular cluster (GC) radial density profiles for 27 brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) from Hubble photometry. These are massive systems, hosting 1,000s to 10,000s of GCs!
My paper is on arXiv today! arxiv.org/abs/2505.24154
The big headline: brightest cluster galaxies with more shallow radial distributions of their *red* GC systems have higher GC system mass / total mass ratios, likely due to early, major mergers with other massive elliptical galaxies!
If I were writing my thesis in days of yore I would be buried under piles of books and papers and people would see me and go "wow poor thing, she's in the thick of it, I have to get her a coffee" but now they just walk past my overheating laptop with 50 tabs open, unaware, and I have no coffee :^(
From Veronika Dornan @dornanv.bsky.social : How do you distinguish between home-grown and imported stars in the Milky Way? You use the Gaia space observatory, of course! 🔭✨☄️
astrobites.org/2025/05/02/cocytos/
From Veronika Dornan @dornanv.bsky.social : BANG! That’s the sound of a new study of the Bullet Cluster that digs deep into where the system’s dark matter is and what properties it may have. 🔭✨☄️
astrobites.org/2025/04/15/jwst-bullet-cluster/
I'm an astronomy PhD student
yes
@bot.astronomy.blue signup
From Veronika Dornan @dornanv.bsky.social : All dark matter, no stars? Is that even possible? That’s just what these authors are trying to determine in today’s article! 🔭✨☄️
astrobites.org/2025/03/06/c...
🆕 Veronika Dornan & Bill Harris (McMaster University) chat with Frank Timmes about their article on radial density profiles: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmmC...
The goal of AAS Journal Author Series is to connect authors with their article, their human story & the larger #astronomy community. 🔭
