Remodeling the Milky Way

Thanks to high precision stellar distances and velocities obtained with the European Space Agency mission Gaia, astronomers are doing all sorts of Milky Way investigations that I personally never imagined would be possible. From identifying the ingredients that first formed the Milky Way, to unscrambling the young clusters around the Sun back to their point(s) of origin 40 million years ago to building highly accurate three-dimensional maps of the interstellar medium, we are in a Golden Age for Galactic astronomers. I will share some of these advances, how they are unravelling our old picture of the Milky Way, and pointing the path to something better.

If you’re interested in some background before the talk, check out the recent article about Bob’s research in Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-new-story-of-the-milky-ways-surprisingly-turbulent-past/

Prof. Benjamin obtained his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin in 1994 and has been a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater since 2003. Although he is about to retire from his position at UW-W this August to provide home care for his mother, he plans to continue his research on the Milky Way as a professor emeritus and is looking forward to the launch of two upcoming NASA missions: SPHEREx (2025) and Roman (2027).

This meeting will take place in person at our usual Space Place classroom location. It will also be streamed live to our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@madisonastronomicalsociety.