Dwarf Galaxies: Laboratories for Nucleosynthesis and Dark Matter

The Milky Way is surrounded by dozens of dwarf galaxies. Although these galaxies contain as few as 1000 stars (compared to 100 billion stars in the Milky Way), they have masses equivalent to millions of stars. The extra mass suggests that dwarf galaxies are reservoirs for dark matter.

Dwarf galaxies are also simpler than the Milky Way. Because they formed very few stars, they also experienced very few supernovae. That makes the production of elements, like carbon, magnesium, and iron, relatively easy to trace throughout the history of these galaxies.

Using spectroscopy of individual stars obtained with the Keck/DEIMOS spectrograph, I will show that dwarf galaxies are excellent laboratories for studying the nucleosynthesis of elements in the periodic table and for learning about the nature of dark matter.