Past Colloquia
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,…
A New Era of Interferometry with GRAVITY
Zoom
Frank Eisenhauer, Max Planck Institute
March 10, 2021
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
The GRAVITY instrument has enabled major steps forward in infrared interferometry, by phase-referenced imaging at milli-arcsecond resolution, with a sensitivity increase by factor thousands, 30-100 micro-arcsecond astrometry, and few micro-arcsecond differential spectro-astrometry. We give an overview of the technology behind GRAVITY and highlight the game-changing…
Cosmology with Gravitational Lens Time Delays
Zoom
Sherry Suyu, Max Planck Institute
March 03, 2021
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Strong gravitational lenses with measured time delays between the multiple images can be used to determine the Hubble constant (H0) that sets the expansion rate of the Universe. An independent determination of H0 is important to ascertain the possible need of new physics beyond the…
Colloquia with Dr. Daniel Gilman and Dr. Almog Yalinewich
Zoom
Daniel Gilman, DADDAA; Almog Yalinewich, CITA
February 24, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Investigating the nature of dark matter with strong gravitational lensing by Daniel Gilman Strong gravitational lensing by galaxies provides a powerful, direct, and elegant method to infer the properties of dark matter structure below 10^8 solar masses, where halos are almost completely devoid of stars and…
Interpreting the ALMA continuum images of protoplanetary disks
Zoom
Kees Dullemond, University of Heidelberg
February 17, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
In recent years a large number of high-resolution ALMA images of protoplanetary disks were published. It is striking how cleanly structured these disks appear to be: they feature nearly perfect rings of dust, with every now and then an elliptic blob, and sometimes m=2 “grand…
Colloquia with Lamiya Mowla and Keir Rogers
Zoom
Local Postdoctoral Fellows, University of Toronto
February 10, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Making it Big: The Effect of Dust on Galaxy Morphology – by Lamiya Mowla Galaxy morphology is one of the fundamental and oldest observational tools used to study the formation and evolution of galaxies. Decades of observations from the ground and thousands of orbits of…
Exoplanet Host Star Age Inferences and Their Impacts on Models of Planet Formation and Evolution
Zoom
Kevin Schlaufman, Johns Hopkins
February 03, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Precise ages for exoplanet host stars have among their many uses the potential to reveal the origin and fate of short-period planets, the effect of host star mass on giant planet formation, the structure and role of atmospheric escape in the evolution of low-mass planets,…
Pinpointing fast radio bursts in space and time
Zoom
Jason Hessels, University of Amsterdam
January 27, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
In the past decade we have started to explore extragalactic and intergalactic space using millisecond-duration radio flashes called `fast radio bursts’ (FRBs). These cosmological signals are surprisingly abundant: there is likely an FRB occurring somewhere on the sky at least once every minute. But what…
Beyond the Gaussian: A Higher-Order Correlation Statistic for the Interstellar Medium
Zoom
Douglas Finkbeiner, Harvard University
January 20, 2021
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Our project to map Milky Way dust has produced 3-D maps of dust density and precise cloud distances, leading to the discovery of the structure known as the Radcliffe Wave. However, these advances have not yet allowed us to do something the CMB community takes…
Colloquium with Conny Aerts
Zoom
Conny Aerts, Institute of Astronomy, KU Leuven
December 16, 2020
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
More information coming soon.