2009-05-28

high-velocity stars

Juna Kollmeier (OCIW) and I spent some time today talking about the ways that high-velocity (think nearly unbound or unbound) stars could be used to constrain properties of the Galaxy. Of course it got me thinking all Bayesian; it has some interesting similarities to the Oort problem, but with the added interesting and very useful (for inference) complication that the orbital times can exceed the stellar lifetimes. If you assume that stars are born near the center of the Galaxy, this could probably be made into a very interesting kind of inference.

1 comment:

  1. very interesting! Do you have any theories on why the stars dont move relative to each from our view point. ie:zodiac signs staying the same

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