Mapping the Milky Way Halo with Blue Horizontal Branch Stars
Supervised by Prof. Ting Li and Prof. Joshua Speagle, funded by 2022 Summer Undergraduate Data Science (SUDS) Opportunities Program, Data Sciences Institute (DSI).
The Milky Way halo provides unique constraints on fundamental physics and possible insights into the nature of dark matter through stellar dynamics and also by preserving a fossil record of our Galaxy’s past environment and assembly history. However, the outskirts of the Milky Way’s halo are difficult to properly characterize since the stellar density is quite low at those distances.
In this project, I worked on developing a statistical model to accurately classify blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars, which can probe the halo out to large distances (~1 million light years!), using photometric data. Based on the classifications, we can develop a 3-D model of the stellar halo of our galaxy.
Check out this story here! Our paper is also coming out soon, stay tuned!