The Secret Life of an Elliptical Galaxy (Free Astronomy Public Lectures)

Presented by Christina Blom-Smith on 12 June 2012.

Despite their uniform appearance elliptical galaxies often have complex and disturbed formation histories. Without the presence of gas, dust and star formation, that we see readily in spiral galaxies, it can be extremely tricky to probe their intriguing formation histories. It is vital to understand how they form since elliptical galaxies contain the highest proportion of stars in the universe and the largest ones uniformly dominate galaxy clusters. Christina Blom, 3rd year PhD student at Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing will take you on a tour of our efforts to unravel the mysteries of elliptical galaxies and share some of our recent successes.