The different merger and evolutionary histories of the Milky Way and Andromeda (M31)

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• Ortwin Gerhard, MPE (Garching)
• Thursday 15 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.

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The Milky Way experienced a major satellite merger _{10 Gyr ago which altered, but did not destroy, the early high-alpha disk and created both an accreted and an in situ inner halo. The low-alpha disk that formed subsequently became bar-unstable} 8 Gyr ago, creating the b/p bulge that also contains the inner high-alpha disk stars. M31 experienced a similar major satellite merger _{3 Gyr ago which greatly heated and mixed the pre-existing high-metallicity disk, and also caused a massive inflow of gas and the formation of a dynamically hot secondary inner disk. Such a merger is consistent with the wide-spread star formation event} 2-4 Gyr ago seen in disk colour-magnitude diagrams, and with the major substructures and metal-rich stars in the inner halo of M31 , when comparing photometric and recent spectroscopic data with available models. The merged satellite must have had a broad metallicity distribution and would have been the third most massive galaxy in the Local Group before the merger.

This talk is part of the Institute of Astronomy Colloquia series.

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