Speaker Night – Jellyfish in the Sky: Ram-Pressure Stripping in Galaxy Clusters

Galaxies are shaped by the environments around them, resulting in an infinite variety of shapes, colors, and dynamics.  Galaxy clusters are one of the most extreme environments in the universe, whose member galaxies are transformed by the cluster as they fall into its gravitational field. When encountering these dense environments, interactions with hot gas between members of a cluster can push gas out of a galaxy in a process called ram-pressure stripping, which results in a metamorphosis into a jellyfish galaxy before shutting off star formation. Jellyfish galaxies keep their stars and dark matter untouched, but the gas is pulled away from the galaxy resulting in a morphology similar to jellyfish tentacles – beautifully marking the transition between an isolated galaxy and a member of a cluster. This talk will discuss the processes surrounding ram pressure stripping and the dance of galaxies, dark matter, and intra-cluster gas, and will include an interpretive dance performance!