Past Colloquia
X-ray observations of active galactic nuclei
Cody Hall
Luigi Gallo (Saint Mary's University)
November 28, 2014
14:00 - 15:00
X-ray observations of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) reveal the physics at work in the region closest to the black hole event horizon. I will discuss some of the most sensitive X-ray observations of AGNs and describe the processes responsible for the complex spectral appearance and…
Surveying the Southern Skies with the SkyMapper Telescope
MP202
Brian P. Schmidt (Australian National University)
November 21, 2014
15:00 - 16:00
SkyMapper is a 1.35m telescope equipped with a 268-Million pixel CCD array that is currently surveying the Southern Sky. I will discuss the history of the telescope, its scientific capability, and key science projects for the telescope, which include a 6-colour, multi-epoch survey of…
Revealing Planet Formation through High-Contrast Imaging of Exoplanets and Circumstellar Debris
Cody Hall
Michael Fitzgerald (UCLA)
November 14, 2014
14:00 - 15:00
The past two decades have seen major advances in our understanding of the formation of planetary systems beyond our own. To date, the techniques that have detected the vast majority of planets around other stars are most sensitive to planets close to their host stars,…
How to Make Massive Stars
Cody Hall
Qizhou Zhang (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
November 07, 2014
14:00 - 15:00
Massive stars dominate the appearance and the evolution of galaxies. Despite their prominent role in shaping on the dynamics and chemistry of interstellar medium, their birth is still poorly understood. In the Milky Way, most young massive stars are found in parsec-scale molecular clumps with…
The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) and Its Successor, APOGEE-2
Cody Hall
Steven R. Majewski (University of Virginia)
October 31, 2014
14:00 - 15:00
The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), one of the programs in Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), has now completed its three year survey of our galaxy. APOGEE is producing a large catalog of high resolution (R ~ 22,500), high quality (S/N >…
Using quasars or CMB to pick the basis in Bell Tests
Cody Hall
Jason Gallicchio (KICP, University of Chicago)
October 24, 2014
14:00 - 15:00
I’ll discuss a practical scheme to use photons from causally disconnected cosmic sources to set the detectors in an experimental test of Bell’s inequality. In current experiments, with settings determined by quantum random number generators, only a small amount of correlation between detector settings and…
CAFTON and PEARL: Using FTIR Spectroscopy to Probe Earth’s Atmosphere
Cody Hall
Kimberly Strong (Physics & School of the Environment, UofT)
October 17, 2014
14:00 - 15:00
Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy provides a powerful tool for probing the terrestrial atmosphere. Solar absorption FTIR spectroscopy can be used to measure atmospheric abundances of tropospheric and stratospheric trace gases, while emission spectroscopy also provides information about clouds and the radiation budget. In this…
Particle Astrophysics at the Highest Energies with the Greenland Neutrino Observatory (GNO)
Cody Hall
Abigail Vieregg (University of Chicago)
October 10, 2014
14:00 - 15:00
Ultra-high energy neutrino astronomy sits at the boundary between particle physics and astrophysics. Through neutrino astrophysics, we can probe the nature of the ultra-high energy universe in a unique way, and test our understanding of particle physics at energies much greater than those achievable at…
Incredible explosions and LCOGT
Cody Hall
Andy Howell (LCOGT)
October 03, 2014
14:00 - 15:00
In the past few years new classes of supernovae have been discovered that are both brighter and fainter than previously thought possible. The superluminous supernovae have luminosities 100 times greater than a core-collapse supernova, and their origin is a mystery. I will present data on…
Fomalhaut b as a Dust Cloud: Frequent Collisions within the Fomalhaut Debris Disk
Cody Hall
Samantha Lawler (University of Victoria)
September 26, 2014
14:00 - 15:00
Fomalhaut hosts a beautiful debris disk ring and a directly imaged planet candidate, Fomalhaut b, which seems to continually defy expectations. Originally thought to be a Jovian-mass planet constraining the ring, its unexpected spectral properties and highly eccentric, possibly ring-crossing orbit have completely ruled out…