Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil Speaks at 2018 TED Conference in Vancouver, BC

Steward Postdoc and TED Fellow Dr. Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil presented her research as one of the selected speakers at the 2018 TED Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. In her talk, she shared her exciting finding – the discovery of an extremely rare galaxy. This galaxy is the first example of an elliptical galaxy with two nearly round rings. Its nearly round central body closely follows a de Vaucouleurs R1/4-law surface brightness profile. A stellar population analysis of multi-waveband data (near-UV, infrared and optical) suggests different formation histories for the rings. While a recent accretion event, probably from a gas-rich dwarf galaxy, is the most plausible formation mechanism for the outer ring, more data is needed to recover the formation history of the inner ring. The origin of the inner ring is especially puzzling because there is currently no known mechanism that can explain the existence of this second ring in such a peculiar galaxy. These results were presented in her paper published by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and can be read HERE. Her TED talk is now available HERE.