Archived AstroTours
The Past, Present and Future of Star Clusters with Milky Way GEMS
By Steffani Grondin on 02 November, 2023Globular clusters are collections of tens of thousands to millions of stars and are some of the densest environments and oldest objects in the entire universe. Although almost every star you see in the night sky was once a part of a clustered environment, stars will not live in a cluster forever. As time goes on, stars can escape from globular clusters, eventually becoming dispersed throughout the Galaxy. However, how do stars escape from a cluster in the first place? And once a star escapes, how do you trace it back to its parent cluster? In this AstroTour, we will explore how new simulations of Galactic GEMS (Globular cluster Extra-tidal Mock Stars) can inform the past, present and future of the most ancient structures in our Milky Way.
About Steffani Grondin
Steffani is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. Her research combines simulations and observations to learn how stars and binaries evolve in star clusters -- cosmic environments containing hundreds to millions of stars. Steffani grew up in a small mountain town before moving to Vancouver to receive her Honours Bachelor of Science at the University of British Columbia. Outside of astronomy, Steffani can often be found exploring the outdoors, training for her next marathon/triathlon, or adding to her ever-expanding vinyl record collection.