Tereasa Brainerd

Research Interests: Satellite galaxies as probes of dark matter halos, weak gravitational lensing, intrinsic alignments of galaxies, galaxy clustering, and numerical simulations of structure formation.

Personal Webpage: http://people.bu.edu/brainerd/

Professor Tereasa Brainerd earned her PhD in Astronomy from The Ohio State University in 1992. Her dissertation work centered on numerical simulations of the formation of structure in a Cold Dark Matter Universe. Prior to joining the faculty of Boston University in 1995, she held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Professor Brainerd served as the Director of the Institute for Astrophysical research for six years, and as the Chair of the Department of Astronomy for six years. She also served a three-year term (2018-2021) as the first Trustee-at-Large of the American Astronomical Society.

Professor Brainerd is best known for her work on weak galaxy-galaxy lensing, the anisotropic distribution of satellite galaxies around their host galaxies, the intrinsic clustering of distant galaxies, and the intrinsic alignments of satellite galaxies with their host galaxies. Professor Brainerd’s current research includes studies of the spatial and velocity distributions of satellite galaxies and comparisons of observed properties of galaxies to the properties of galaxies in large simulations.

 

Recent Media Coverage: Could the Distribution of Galaxies Reveal the Universe’s Invisible Web of Dark Matter?

If, while standing in the Southern Hemisphere, you were to look up into a clear night sky, Boston University astronomer Tereasa Brainerd says you might be able to make out two bright spots in the sky that make up the Magellanic Clouds. Except they’re not clouds at all; they are two small galaxies orbiting our own, larger Milky Way galaxy. By the naked eye, the Magellanic Clouds are the easiest to see of nearly 70 satellite galaxies caught in the gravitational tow of the Milky Way. 

Throughout the universe, satellite galaxies orbit around host galaxies, and scientists like Brainerd, who has been studying these cosmic systems for years, currently suspect that the satellites are likely located inside halos of dark matter that extend beyond the perimeter of host galaxies. But since dark matter isn’t visible, the idea has so far remained unproven as one aspect of what scientists call the “cold dark matter theory.”

Read the complete article here: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2020/could-the-distribution-of-galaxies-reveal-the-universes-invisible-web-of-dark-matter/