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Galaxies SIG Seminar

Galaxies Science Interest Group

Galaxies SIG about Galaxies SIG Seminar

Location

Virtual

DAtes

6 October 2026
1:00pm ET

Community

Galaxies SIG

Type

Seminar

A Galaxy Doesn’t Forget: Why You Should Trust Your Resolved SFHs from Photometric Observations

Speaker

Charlotte Olsen (CUNY City Tech)

Abstract

Spatially resolved galaxy properties are routinely derived from integral-field spectroscopy and increasingly from multi-band photometry as a wealth of photometric data becomes available in large surveys. Spatially resolved star formation histories (SFHs) offer a detailed view of galaxy growth and quenching by tracing the timing and location of star formation within a galaxy. However, stellar migration between spaxels can strongly bias these reconstructions. Quantifying how much bias we expect in observations remains challenging because many zoom-in simulations do not resolve initial stellar dispersions or migration rates. We use the well-validated h277 Milky-Way-mass cosmological zoom simulation, which resolves both via advanced molecular-cloud modeling, to compare the actual radial distribution of star formation to the distribution inferred from the resolved SFHs up to a lookback time of ~1.6 Gyr in several evolutionary windows. Measuring migration rates in annuli matched to typical spaxel scales, we quantify how well we can recover the radial profiles from resolved SFHs at different time steps and find them consistent in slope and the relative shape of the scatter up to 1 Gyr lookback time.

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Angled from the upper left corner to the lower right corner is a cone-shaped orange-red cloud known as Herbig-Haro 49/50. This feature takes up about three-fourths of the length of this angle. The upper left end of this feature has a translucent, rounded end. The conical feature widens slightly from the rounded end at the upper right down to the lower right. Along the cone there are additional rounded edges, like edges of a wave, and intricate foamy-like details, as well as a clearer view of the black background of space. In the upper left, overlapping with the rounded end of Herbig-Haro 49/50, is a background spiral galaxy with a concentrated blue center that fades outward to blend with red spiral arms. The background of space is speckled with some white stars and smaller, more numerous, fainter white galaxies throughout.