MUSE-Faint: Dissecting the faintest galaxies with MUSE
Ultra-faint dwarfs are the lowest mass and most dark-matter dominated galaxies known. The shallow potential wells make them susceptible to feedback from star formation and their low baryonic content allows us to use their stars as test-particles in the dark matter potential. Here we will give an overview of the MUSE-Faint survey, a MUSE GTO survey of 10 ultra-faint dwarfs. After introducing the survey, we will outline how the high density of stellar spectra obtainable with MUSE can be used to constrain the dark matter content and density profiles of the galaxies and discuss how the data can be used to constrain dark matter models. After this introduction we will present a detailed study of Leo T, a transition dwarf for which MUSE and the literature provides us with 75 member stars. Armed with these stars we will discuss the stellar content of the dwarf and show that the young stars in Leo T have a distinctly different velocity dispersion from the older stars, while having much the same metallicity.
"Marchetti" Room, building U1