
Past Colloquia
Discovering the cold extrasolar planets with gravitational microlensing
Online Zoom
Prof. Shude Mao
December 07, 2022
11:00am - 12:00pm
Microlensing has become a powerful method to detect cold extrasolar planets beyond the snowline and free-floating planets. In this talk, I will first introduce the basic concepts of gravitational microlensing, review some of the recent discoveries with ongoing surveys, and then finish with a discussion…
The Far Ultraviolet diffuse background
AB 107, Codyhall
Shrinivas Kulkarni, Caltech
November 23, 2022
3:00pm - 4:00pm
Historically, the search for the inter-galactic medium(IGM) motivated the search for the Far Ultraviolet (FUV) backgroundwhich in turn led to a number of experiments and missions. Decadeslater the focus shifted to FUV as the primary heating and ionizingagent of the atomic phases (warm and cold…
A Golden Age of Asteroseismology with Kepler and TESS
Zoom
Tim Bedding
November 16, 2022
3:00pm - 4:00pm
Asteroseismology uses the natural oscillation modes of stars to study their interiors. The wonderfully precise measurements by NASA’s Kepler and TESS missions are ideal data sources for the technique. These space telescopes have been monitoring the brightness of hundreds of thousands of stars, with the…
Galaxy evolution in and around the circumgalactic bubble: New discoveries with CHaS and beyond
AB 107, Codyhall
David Schiminovich
November 02, 2022
3:00pm - 4:00pm
Despite tremendous progress in the 65 years since a possible interstellar “galactic corona” was first postulated, the study of warm-hot galactic atmospheres—now commonly referred to as the circumgalactic medium (CGM)—remains one of the last great baryonic frontiers in our developing census of the Universe. In…
Observing the hierarchical formation of our Milky Way
AB 107, Codyhall
Alan McConnachie, NRC Herzberg
October 26, 2022
3:00pm - 4:00pm
2024 will be the 30th anniversary of the discovery of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, the prototype and nonpareil of a galaxy in the process of being consumed by our Milky Way. It remains the most striking evidence for the ongoing hierarchical formation of galaxies in our…
Black holes and revelations: unseen companions in stellar binaries
AB 107, Codyhall
Kareem El-Badry
October 19, 2022
3:00pm - 4:00pm
The Milky Way contains of order 10^8 stellar-mass black holes (BHs). Yet, fewer than 100 BH candidates are known, and only about 20 are dynamically confirmed. Our view of the BH population has been shaped almost entirely by observations of X-ray binaries and gravitational wave…
The Irregular Moon Systems of the Giant Planets
AB 107, Codyhall, 50 St. George Street Toronto
Brett Gladman
September 28, 2022
3:00pm - 4:00pm
Each of our giant planets has a regular and an irregular systemof moons. Regular moons lie very close to the planet’s equatorialplane on nearly-circular direct orbits that share the planetaryrotational sense, and likely formed in the disk. Irregular moons,in contrast, orbit at nearly all orbital…
Colloquium with Carol-Ann Burke
Zoom
Carol-Ann Burke, OISE, University of Toronto
April 06, 2022
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
More information coming soon
Colloquium with Shude Mao
March 23, 2022
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
More information coming soon.
Dynamical probes of black holes in globular clusters
TBD
Vincent Hénault-Brunet, Saint Mary's University
March 09, 2022
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Abstract: Globular star clusters (GCs) have long been used to test theories of stellar evolution, stellar dynamics, and galaxy formation. In recent years, these old and compact stellar systems have emerged as fertile grounds to search for black holes and understand their formation, as well…