Selected Presentations
Below is a selection of the talks and posters I have presented at conferences, workshops, and seminars. The full PDF for each presentation can be accessed by clicking on the corresponding image.
Resolving the Multi-Scale Interstellar Medium of Local Group Galaxies
Observational constraints on the small-scale structure of the interstellar medium (ISM) are critical for understanding how star formation and feedback processes drive galaxy evolution across cosmic time. The last decade has seen an explosion of panchromatic HST imaging of nearby galaxies (e.g. PHAT/PHAST, HTTP, PHATTER, LUVIT, Scylla, etc.). With stellar SED fitting techniques like the Bayesian Extinction And Stellar Tool (BEAST), we can harness these rich data to simultaneously characterize individual resolved stars and extract information about the ISM. I present new parsec-scale dust extinction maps in the Magellanic Clouds (Scylla), and discuss future BEAST science to investigate how small-scale processes shape galaxy evolution.
A recording of the presentation can be viewed here.
Dust around massive stars is agnostic to galactic environment: New insights from PHAT & BEAST
Despite the close proximity of the Magellanic Clouds (XMC), we still do not have a comprehensive understanding of the 3D distribution of their ISM. With new, deep multi-wavelength observations from HST, the Scylla survey will enable us to constrain distances to dusty gas structures along nearly 100 lines of sight, allowing us to probe the overall distribution of the ISM within the XMC. As a test case, we present preliminary findings on the distances toward individual molecular clouds within the 30 Doradus region of the LMC. We find that, although these molecular clouds are close in projection, they are in fact separated by several kpc in distance. Coupled with observations from ALMA, these results indicate outflowing, CO-rich gas in the region.
Slides from talk presented at the XMC Workshop: Milky Clouds Over Manhattan at the Flatiron Institute (2024).
Constraining the 3D Structure of the ISM in 30 Doradus with Scylla
Resolving the environments of massive stars is crucial for understanding their formation mechanisms as well as their impact on galaxy evolution. An important open question is whether massive stars found in diffuse regions outside of spiral arms formed in-situ or migrated there after forming in denser environments. To address this question, we use multi-resolution measurements of extinction in the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) to probe the interstellar medium (ISM) surrounding massive stars across a variety of galactic environments. We construct a catalog of 42,107 massive star candidates using resolved stellar photometry from the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT) program plus stellar and dust model estimates by the Bayesian Extinction and Stellar Tool (BEAST). We quantify galactic environments by computing surrounding stellar densities using kernel density estimation. We then compare high-resolution line-of-sight extinction estimates from the BEAST with 25-pc resolution dust maps from PHAT which measure the total column density distribution of dust. Our key finding is that, although the average total column density of dust increases with the density of stars, the average line-of-sight extinction towards massive stars remains constant across all environments. This suggests that massive stars have a uniform amount of dust in their immediate environment, regardless of their location in the galaxy. One possible explanation for these findings is that small molecular clouds are still capable of forming massive stars, even if they are not resolvable at 25-pc. These results indicate that massive stars are forming in the sparse regions of M31, as opposed to migrating there.
Slides from plenary talk given at the Resolving Galaxy Ecosystems Across All Scales conference in Hong Kong (2023).