The Dark Local Universe: Unveiling the Halos of Andromeda and the Milky Way

This project seeks to advance our understanding of galaxy formation and the astrophysical properties of darkmatter. The development of large galaxies is powered by continual merging with smaller systems. The ghostlyremnants of these cannibalised satellites encode the build-up of mass in a galaxy and trace the underlyinggravitational field. This project will exploit recent major improvements in astronomical imaging technology to studyultra-faint stellar streams in the outskirts of our Milky Way and its twin sister Andromeda, revealing, for the firsttime, their assembly histories and the precise properties of their dark matter halos. These quantities representfundamental experimental benchmarks for testing modern cosmological models.