Past Colloquia
Coevolution (Or Not) Of Supermassive Black Holes And Host Galaxies
Cody Hall
John Kormendy (University of Texas)
October 23, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
I review the observed demographics and inferred evolution of supermassive black holes (BHs) found by dynamical modeling of spatially resolved kinematics. Tight correlations between BH mass and the mass and velocity dispersion of the host-galaxy bulge have led to the belief that BHs and bulges…
The Social Network Outburst: A Multiwavelength perspective on the 2015 V404 Cyg Outburst
Cody Hall
Greg Sivakoff (University of Alberta)
October 16, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
Accretion disks and jets are ubiquitous astrophysical phenomena. Given the potential feedback between supermassive black holes and galaxy evolution, understanding the physics of accretion discs and relativistic radio jets around Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) has gained increased motivation; however, the outbursts of AGN likely last…
Tracking Planet Footprints in Dusty Disks
Cody Hall
Catherine Espaillat (Boston University)
October 09, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
We know that most stars were once surrounded by protoplanetary disks. How these young disks evolve into planetary systems is a fundamental question in astronomy. Observations of T Tauri stars (TTS) may provide insights, particularly a subset of TTS with “transitional disks” that contain holes…
Central galaxies and their satellites out to z~2
Cody Hall
Ryan Quadri (Texas A&M University)
October 02, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
The mysterious lack of star formation in a substantial fraction of the galaxy population over a wide range in both mass and redshift has been the subject of much discussion over the years. We can gain information about the quenching processes that operate specifically on…
The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury: 0.1 Billion Stars, and Lots and Lots of Dust
Cody Hall
Julianne Dalcanton (University of Washington)
September 25, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
Abstract: The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury is an HST multicycle program to image the north east quadrant of M31 to deep limits in the UV, optical, and near-IR. The HST imaging has resolved the galaxy into over 150 million stars (comparable to ~1/2 the number…
Probing the Secrets of Supernovae through their Spectra and Light Curves
Cody Hall
John Hillier (University of Pittsburgh)
September 18, 2015
14:00 - 15:00
The discovery of thousands of supernovae (SNe) by modern survey telescopes is allowing us to define the statistics of SN occurrence as a function of class and host galaxy properties, and is helping to facilitate the direct identification of SN progenitors. Further, we are able…
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…