Past Colloquia
Current status and future plans of the W. M. Keck Observatory
MP137
Hilton Lewis (Keck Observatory)
August 19, 2015
15:00 - 16:00
The W. M. Keck Observatory operates the largest, most scientifically productive telescopes on Earth. The two, 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes near the summit of Mauna Kea on the Island of Hawaii feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectroscopy and…
The Virgo Cluster of Galaxies
MP134
Laura Ferrarese (National Research Council)
July 17, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
At a distance of 16.5 Mpc and with a gravitating mass of 4.2×10^14 solar masses, the Virgo Cluster is the dominant mass concentration in the local universe, the centre of the Local Supercluster, and the largest concentration of galaxies within ~35 Mpc. With thousands of…
Listening for the Echoes of Inflation from Antarctica
Cody Hall
Jeffrey Filippini (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
April 17, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
Our modern account of cosmic history begins with inflation, a moment of rapid expansion that established the large-scale geometry of our universe and sowed the quantum seeds of structure formation. Inflation should further have imprinted the universe with primordial gravitational waves on cosmological scales. The…
The Future of Astronomy is Super(conducting): Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors for UVOIR Astronomy
Cody Hall
Ben Mazin (UC Santa Barbara)
April 10, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
In the last five years we have made remarkable progress in turning superconducting lumped element microwave resonators into the most powerful UV, optical, and near-IR detectors in the world. In this talk I will describe in detail the operating principles of these detectors, called Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors, and…
A Half-Century of Astronomy Outreach: Stories, Reflections, and Lessons Learned
Cody Hall
John Percy (University of Toronto)
March 27, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
Outreach has always been valued in our department, and the university as a whole shows signs of making it a higher priority — not just because it supports recruitment, alumni relations, fundraising, and our public image, but also because we are accountable to the public,…
Mass assembly in star-forming clouds from filaments to disks
Cody Hall
Rachel Friesen (University of Toronto)
March 20, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
Recent surveys of dust continuum emission of Galactic star-forming regions have revealed the ubiquity of filamentary structures in molecular clouds. The prevalence of filaments within star-forming regions raises the tantalizing possibility that the star formation efficiency in molecular clouds is strongly dependent on how these…
Revealing the gas-star formation connection over cosmic time
Cody Hall
Jacqueline Hodge (NRAO)
March 13, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
Thanks to deep surveys in the rest-frame optical/UV and color-selection techniques, the star formation history of the universe has now been constrained through the era of galaxy assembly at z~1-3 and all the way out to the epoch of reionization. Yet despite such advances, little…
New Insights into the Interstellar Medium in our Neighbor M31
Cody Hall
Karin Sandstrom (University of Arizona)
March 06, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
As the nearest metal-rich, star-forming galaxy to the Milky Way, M31 plays a key role in understanding the interstellar medium (ISM) and star formation at z~0. Because of its proximity, we can study the properties of the ISM on the scale of individual star-forming molecular…
Double Feature: “SZ with AGN” and “The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor”
Cody Hall
Tobias Marriage (Princeton)
February 13, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
Part 1: Evidence is mounting that Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are responsible for the lack of star-formation in the most massive galaxies. Attention has been drawn to the role of energetic radio-mode feedback from the AGN in heating the gas around massive halos and preventing…
Exotic Supernovae and Tidal Disruption Events from the Pan-STARRS1 Survey
Cody Hall
Ryan Chornock (Ohio University)
February 06, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
The Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) project was a five-band optical survey of the northern sky that recently finished operations after taking data for more than four years. One of the primary scientific drivers was to perform a deep time-domain survey of ten 7 sq. deg. fields. Our…