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SUMMARY:The Halo Outskirts With Variable Stars (HOWVAST) survey: detecting
  Milky Way mass tracers beyond 100 kpc
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20230320T115100Z
DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20230320T115300Z
DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20241114T092411Z
UID:indico-contribution-294@meetings.aip.de
DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Ricardo R.  Munoz (Universidad de Chile)\nAccording 
 to our currently favored cosmological framework\, the Lambda- Cold Dark Ma
 tter model\, galaxies like the Milky Way were built through the accretion 
 and merger of smaller systems. In this scenario\, the extended halo of the
  Milky Way must retain information about this process.  Key to unveiling t
 his information is our ability to trace the outermost regions of the halo 
 by detecting and studying the properties of bound objects. One of the most
  relevant family of such objects is the low-mass\, old-population\, RR Lyr
 ae (RRL) pulsational variables\, ubiquitous in the halo and for which prec
 ise distances can be obtained. RRLs have proven to be essential in related
  but different areas: in this particular\, we seek to detect distant (>100
  kpc) RRLs that can help improve estimations of the Milky Way mass\, espec
 ially at large distances. In this context\, we report our search for faint
  RR Lyrae stars using Dark Energy Camera (DECam) data over ~400 sq. deg.\,
  as part of the Halo Outskirts With Variable Stars (HOWVAST) survey\, wher
 e we detect more than ∼500 RR Lyrae candidates ranging in heliocentric d
 istances from 7 to 270 kpc. 27 of these stars are located beyond 100 kpc f
 rom the Galactic center\, increasing our current sample of distant mass tr
 acers\, critical to improve current Milky Way mass determinations which su
 ffer from at least 50% uncertainty. HOWVAST represents our effort to carry
  out frontier Galactic science done with RRLs\, and should only be surpass
 ed once the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSS
 T) begins scientific operations\, which is expected for mid 2024.\n\nhttps
 ://iaus379.aip.de/event/20/contributions/294/
LOCATION:Haus H\, Telegrafenberg
URL:https://iaus379.aip.de/event/20/contributions/294/
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