Colloquium Abstract - Monty - 2026Oct23

October 23, 2026

11:00am Mountain

Stephanie Monty (NMSU)

 

Globular clusters as a galactic building blocks: chrono-chemo-dynamical probes of the formation and evolution of galaxies 

 

Abstract

Globular clusters are multi-faceted cosmic tracers, rapidly emerging as key players in addressing outstanding questions across astrophysics. Locally, they are unique objects where age, chemistry and dynamical properties can all be determined with exceptionally high precision (on the order 1-5%) thanks to their abundance of bright, evolved stars. As the most prolific site in the Universe for the production of nitrogen - one of the most important elements for the emergence of life (e.g. in amino acids) - they have a tangible connection to human history. Their high stellar densities facilitate the formation of black hole binary systems hierarchically, explaining the origin of the second peak in the bimodal gravitational wave - black hole binary mass distribution and, thanks to breakthroughs in numerical simulations, globular cluster progenitors have also been shown to host the seeds of super-massive black holes, possibly solving the long-standing puzzle of rapid QSO emergence. Finally, the importance of GCs in early galaxy formation continues to increase. Observations of massive bound clusters at the epoch of reionisation, extreme nitrogen enhancement at 𝑧 >= 11 and a possible connection between GCs and Little Red Dots are recent examples from JWST, while the discovery that 50% of ancient, in-situ Milky Way stars are nitrogen enhanced connects GCs directly to the pursuit of Galactic Archaeology. Over the course of this talk, I will introduce these fascinating objects and the approach I take to studying them, focusing on high precision chemical abundances, galactic chemical evolution, dynamical modelling and adaptive optics instrumentation.


Local Host: Amy Mioduszewski

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