Sal Wanying Fu

I am a PD Soros and NSF graduate research fellow, and an astronomy PhD candidate at UC Berkeley. Advised by Prof. Dan Weisz, I study the resolved stellar populations of the smallest galaxies in the universe using the Hubble Space Telescope. Before coming to UC Berkeley, I completed multiple stellar spectroscopy projects with Dr. Josh Simon at the Carnegie Observatories, and earned my B.A. in physics at Pomona College. I am interested in everything that falls under the umbrella of near-field cosmology, using observations of our cosmic neighborhood to understand how our universe came to be today.

Click here for my CV.

Current Research

I am broadly interested in using chemical abundance data of stars in dwarf galaxies to infer how these galaxies form and evolve and interpret the implications of their origin stories within a larger cosmological context.

Using narrow-band imaging from HST proposal GO-15901 (PI: Weisz), which targets flux around the Calcium H & K lines, I am inferring the stellar metallicity distribution function (MDF) in 16 ultra-faint dwarf galaxies that orbit our Milky Way galaxy. Leveraging the unique imaging capacity of HST, my work promises to provide the community with the most extensive catalog of stellar metallicity measurements in these galaxies to-date. In the first paper from this program, which you can find here, we analyze the most luminous of the UFDs observed, Eridanus II, to show the promise of Ca H & K imaging for faithfully recovering features of its MDF. Forthcoming work will publish MDFs of rest of the satellites observed by this program.

I have also been awarded 23 orbits on HST in Cycle 28 (Program GO-16226) to conduct the same observations on two quenched field dwarf galaxies in the Local Group, Cetus and Tucana. This program similarly has potential to yield an unprecedentedly detailed view of these galaxies' stellar metallicity distribution functions, which we can use to infer how these galaxies stopped forming stars. Observations for this program will be complete in the summer of 2021.

Selected Publications and Presentations

Publications

S. W. Fu, D. R. Weisz, et al. 2022. Metallicity Distribution Function of the Eridanus II Ultra-faint Dwarf Galaxy from Hubble Space Telescope Narrowband Imaging. ApJ, 925, 6. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022ApJ...925....6F/abstract
S. W. Fu, J. D. Simon, et al. 2019. Dynamical Histories of the Crater II and Hercules Dwarf Galaxies. ApJ, 883, 11. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019ApJ...883...11F/abstract
S. W. Fu, J. D. Simon, et al. 2018. The Origin of the 300 km/s Stream Near Segue 1. ApJ, 866, 42. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018ApJ...866...42F/abstract

Presentations

J. D. Simon, S. W. Fu, et al. 2019. The Nature of the Peculiar Milky Way Satellite Sagittarius II. iPoster presentation at 233rd AAS Meeting in Seattle, WA. link to the iPoster

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Contact Me

You can reach me via email at swfu at berkeley dot edu.