Past Colloquia
Probing the early Milky Way with the Pristine survey
Zoom
Else Starkenburg
October 13, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
The lowest metallicity stars that still exist today represent a window into the early Universe. Studying these stars gives us a local avenue to guide our understanding of star formation and supernova feedback in the early Universe, the early build-up of galaxies like our Milky…
Dwarf Galaxies and Their Black Holes
Zoom
Jenny Greene, Princeton
October 06, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Because they are dark-matter dominated, dwarf galaxies provide some of the most stringent tests of our cold dark matter model. Specifically, Lambda CDM makes predictions about the number, shape, and spatial distributions of the faint friends of massive galaxies. I will present results from the…
Colloquium with Prof. Adam Hincks and Prof. Marten van Kerkwijk
Zoom
Adam Hincks and Marten van Kerkwijk, University of Toronto
September 29, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
A Cosmic Filament Illuminated by the Cosmic Microwave Background – by Prof. Adam Hincks Only a small fraction of baryons today are found in galaxies. In fact, for many years ~30–40% of the baryonic matter predicted to exist by early universe cosmology were unaccounted for…
Colloquium with Renée Hložek and Ting Li
Zoom
Renée Hložek and Ting Li, University of Toronto
September 22, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Can astronomical methods help detect signs of neurodegeneration? – by Prof. Renée Hložek Structures in the brain look like structures in the sky: the natural world contains self-similarity that can be exploited to allow for learning across disciplines. While imaging data in the two fields…
The quest of measuring star-formation histories to elucidate the first galaxies
Zoom
Sandro Tacchella, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
September 15, 2021
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
The last great unknown of the cosmic history is when, why and how the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang. These galaxies played an important role in re-ionizing the universe and are also an important tracer of early structure formation. I will present new results on…
Studying star formation from the stratosphere
Zoom
Laura Fissel, Queen's University
April 14, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
An important mystery in astrophysics is why the conversion of interstellar gas into stars is such an inefficient process. We typically observe of order 1% the star formation rate expected from a free-fall gravitational collapse of molecular gas clouds. This low efficiency is likely due to regulation from a combination of turbulent gas motions,…
Expanding the gravitational-wave spectrum
Zoom
Sarah Burke-Spolaor, University of West Virginia
April 07, 2021
2:00pm - 3:00pm
We are seeking both electromagnetic and gravitational waves from binary supermassive black holes, the biggest, discrete binary systems in the Universe. When galaxies merge, these giant binaries can form. During their inspiral and coalescence phases, they will produce intense gravitational radiation, which we expect to…
Advancing the Astronomical Inclusion Revolution
Zoom
Dara Norman, NOIRLab
March 31, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
The field of Astronomy and Astrophysics has seen major changes in the last couple of decades. There have been discoveries that have evolved our understanding of the Universe. The development of new methods and gathering of datasets have expanded topical areas of the field in…
Shaping the future of weak-lensing cosmology with the Roman Space Telescope
Zoom
Dr. Jenna Freudenburg, DADDAA
March 24, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
In the past decade, our understanding of the standard model of cosmology has been shaped by constraints on Lambda-CDM from so-called Stage III surveys, such as the Dark Energy Survey. In the 2020s, a wealth of new data from Stage IV surveys – including the…
The End of all Worlds
Zoom
Boris Gaensicke, University of Warwick
March 17, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Many of the known planets – in the solar system Mars and beyond – will survive the post main-sequence evolution of their host stars into white dwarfs. Later interactions scatter asteroids, moons, and possibly entire planets deep into the gravitational potential of the white dwarf,…