Danny Horta
Galactic astronomy
Latest news: I was recently awarded the IAU best PhD prize in the division for galaxies and cosmologyShort bio
I am currently a Flatiron research fellow in the Nearby Universe group at the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) at the Flatiron Institute in New York City.
I obtained my PhD in 2022 at the Astrophysics Research Institute (Liverpool, UK).
I am what people call a “spanish-geordie”.
Research
I am primarily interested in the formation and evolution of the Milky Way and its Globular Cluster system, and how we can apply this knowledge to further understand how other galaxies in the Universe form. More recently, I have become very interested in galactic dynamics, statistics/machine learning, understanding the nature of dark matter, and resolved stellar populations of the Local Group.
I primarily analyse/model big data from either large-scale surveys of the Milky Way (e.g., Gaia, APOGEE, GALAH) and/or data from sophisticated cosmological numerical simulations (e.g., FIRE, EAGLE, E-MOSAICS)
Publications
My full list of publications can be found here, but here are some highlights:
Discovery of a major building block of the halo, link
Measuring orbits, mass density, and dark matter with element abundances, link
The mass from destroyed globular clusters in the Milky Way, link
Chemically characterising halo substructure in the Galaxy, link
Inferring the properties of proto-Milky Way populations, link
Inference of the star formation of the Milky Way disc from chemical abundances, link
Linking globular cluster formation across redshifts, link
The observable properties of galaxy accretion events in Milky Way-like galaxies, link
CV
Employment and education
- 2022-present: Flatiron Research Fellow in the Nearby Universe group at the Center for Computational Astrophysics, New York USA.
- 2018-2022: PhD student at the Astrophysics Research institute, Liverpool UK
- 2014-2018: Bachelors and Master's student in Physics with Astrophysics at Northumbria University, Newcastle UK
My full CV and list of publications can be found here.