Astronomers in Scotland and around the world use space telescopes every day to understand more about our galaxy and our place in the Universe. But how do you study how galaxies like the Milky Way form and evolve when you can't sit around waiting for the billions of years it takes to happen? Star clusters -- bright, massive, extremely old, gravitationally bound groups of stars -- can act as tracers of the changes their host galaxies have undergone. Join Dr Veronika Dornan, a Royal Observatory of Edinburgh astronomer, to learn which space telescopes are best for looking at star clusters and what exactly they can tell us about the history of our galaxy and beyond.
Dr Veronika Dornan is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Edinburgh studying extragalactic star clusters with the Euclid space telescope. She earned her Phd in 2025 at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She is also a writer for Astrobites, summarizing the most recent astronomical research for the general public.
Join us from 19:15 on Thursday 17th September in Room 6.41 of the Royal College building at Strathclyde University for a brief "What's up in the sky?" talk, before the lecture begins at 19:30.
This can be accessed via the James Weir building on Montrose Street.