Seminars and Colloquia at ESO Santiago

Massive stars in star-forming regions inject huge amounts of energy and momentum into the ISM producing ubiquitous superbubbles, turbulent gas motions and outflows. The coupling efficiency of stellar feedback and its dependence on metallicity remains uncertain in simulations. Analysing the MUSE and HST observations from the PHANGS survey, we identified about 1500 expanding superbubbles and regions with local turbulent gas motions and linked them to the young star clusters. This allowed us to measure the coupling efficiency of mechanical stellar feedback and how it depends on the metallicity directly from the observations. In my talk, I will overview the current state of the PHANGS survey and focus on the measurements of the energy balance between massive stars and the ionized ISM in 19 nearby galaxies. 

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MOONS is a 0.8–1.8-μm multi-object spectrometer designed to work at the Nasmyth focus of the VLT’s UT1. It will have 944 fibres patrolling a field 25 arcminutes in diameter. MOONS can be used with a spectroscopic resolving power R ~ 4000 spanning the full near-infrared wavelength range, or with R ~ 9000 in the I band and R ~ 18 000 in the H band. MOONS has two main sub-components, the rotating front end (which is at the focal plane and houses the fibre positioners, the acquisition system and the metrology system for the fibres) and the cryogenic spectrographs, which will be on the telescope’s Nasmyth platform. MOONS is now fully assembled at the UK-ATC, Edinburgh. PAE is expected this summer and it will arrive at Paranal by the end of the year. This talk will cover the science drivers behind the instrument and its current status.

Studies of micrometeorites in mid-Ordovician limestones and Earth’s impact craters show that our planet witnessed a massive infall of ordinary L chondrite material ~466 million years ago that it believed to be at the origin of the first major mass extinction event (Schmitz et al. 2019). The breakup of a large asteroid in the main belt is the likely cause of this massive infall. In modern times, material originating from this breakup still dominates meteorite falls (~37% of all falls). I will present spectroscopic observations and dynamical evidence that we have identified the only plausible source of this catastrophic event and of the most abundant class of meteorites falling on Earth today.

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