{"id":1234,"date":"2023-09-14T19:23:37","date_gmt":"2023-09-14T19:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/astronomia.bedigital.cl\/?post_type=researcher&p=1234"},"modified":"2025-08-21T03:08:33","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T03:08:33","slug":"keerthana-jegatheesan","status":"publish","type":"researcher","link":"https:\/\/astronomia.udp.cl\/en\/researcher\/keerthana-jegatheesan\/","title":{"rendered":"Keerthana Jegatheesan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Keerthana Jegatheesan<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Former PhD student<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I’m a former PhD student in extragalactic astronomy, where I studied galaxies in the local Universe using spectroscopy to understand how they form and evolve across cosmic time. I worked primarily in the optical regime with integral field spectroscopy using SDSS-MaNGA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The many faces and personalities of galaxies are shaped by physical processes that affect their different components – like bulges and discs – in different ways and leave characteristic imprints on the light and spectra of these components. Disentangling their spectra can reveal vital clues that can be traced back in time to understand how galaxies and their components form and evolve across cosmic time. While individual galaxies give important clues in exquisite detail, a more statistical approach is needed to understand how galaxy populations evolve as a whole. During my PhD, I was working on projects within the BUDDI-MaNGA framework, where we built the first largest statistical sample of bulge and disc spectra to date, for local galaxies using the recent data release of MaNGA. With this novel approach, we examined the spectra of bulges and discs of spiral galaxies, to look for clues of formation pathways by reconstructing their mass assembly histories and studying their stellar populations. With projects making use of BUDDI applied to different galaxy morphologies, we look for hints on the formation and evolution of bulges and discs in today’s galaxy population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Highlights<\/h5>\n\n\n\n