Animating the Mysteries of the Universe! —is brought to you by the Astro-Animators at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in conjunction with scientists at NASA GSFC. MICA students will debut their new animations with you and discuss their process for creating these masterpieces. Topics will include how the Moon was born, a mission to Venus, planets around other stars, how to find life, stars that glow in gamma rays, and mysterious cosmic rays. The students will be happy to discuss how to become an animator! Recommended for all ages.

Feeding, feedback, and dust in local “active” galaxies
Marina Bianchin (University of California, Irvine)

Galaxy evolution is one of the main topics of modern-day Astrophysics. The details of how galaxies evolve are still not fully understood from both theoretical and observational perspectives. Galaxy mergers, fast star formation, and active galactic nuclei (AGN) are believed to be crucial in shaping galaxies to their current evolutionary stage. These phenomena peaked at the time known as cosmic noon (z~2) where Ultra-Luminous Infrared Galaxies ((U)LIRGs, galaxies with LIR≥1011Lsun) are also prevalent. In the local Universe (U)LIRGs are also observed, allowing the detailed study of their physical properties in conditions analogous to those in the higher redshift population. In my talk I will explore the results from the JWST ERS program, focusing on the NGC 7469 galaxy. NGC 7469 is a nearby (z=0.016) Sy 1.5 galaxy classified as an LIRG with a prominent star-forming ring. Its face-on morphology makes it an ideal target to study the interplay between star formation regions and AGN. We used JWST spectroscopic capabilities to study the high ionization emission lines, the molecular gas, and the dust content revealing the role of the supermassive black hole feeding and feedback in this galaxy. I will also highlight the recent results of another JWST GO program where we observed the first spatially resolved warm molecular gas outflows in a radio galaxy and talk about the preliminary results of a survey of such outflow and molecular gas properties in nearby (U)LIRGs.

Exploiting the power of nearby laboratories to uncover the history of galaxies
Svea S Hernandez (STScI)

Metallicities of galaxies at all redshifts are critical for deciphering a plethora of physical and evolutionary processes taking place among and inside galaxies, including star formation, stellar feedback and interstellar/intergalactic chemical enrichment. Studies of local star-forming galaxies (SFGs) can be performed at exquisite signal-to-noise and spatial resolution, which are not achievable at higher redshift. Therefore, these studies establish a baseline in understanding how gas and stellar properties evolve through cosmic time. I take advantage of the unique FUV spectroscopic capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope, along with the high sensitivity in the MIR of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and complement our space observations with those from several ground-based telescopes to investigate a sample of local galaxies, which span a wide range in morphological types, metallicities and star formation rates. The results from my metallicity studies of nearby (<100 Mpc) galaxies will be discussed with a dedicated focus on their stellar, neutral-gas, and ionized-gas components. I will show how using spectroscopic observations of star clusters and their nearby gas allows us to observe the chemical evolution of galaxies through a much larger window in both space and time. Lastly, I will present some of the most recent results from our JWST program dedicated to dissect a key ingredient in the recipe for star formation: molecular gas. I will close with a brief discussion on the implications these data have in the understanding of the processes that drive the evolution of galaxies.