Astro Seminar
Two years of VERTICO: How do environmental processes quench cluster galaxies?
Speaker: Toby Brown (Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Centre)
Date: Wednesday 4 October 2023
Time: 16:00
Venue: N3.28/Zoom
The Virgo Environment Traced in CO Survey (VERTICO) is an Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array Large Program that has mapped the distribution and kinematics of star-forming molecular gas across 51 Virgo Cluster satellite galaxies on sub-kpc scales. In this talk, I will showcase VERTICO results revealing how environmental mechanisms actively remove molecular gas, alter its distribution, and change the composition of the interstellar medium in cluster galaxies. I will also show that ram pressure stripping systematically increases molecular gas densities and triggers star formation activity on the leading half of the galaxy during the early stages of cluster infall, while lengthening gas depletion times and quenching galaxies in the latter stages.