Astrophysics

Large luminous galaxies like the Milky Way grow in mass hierarchically through accretion and merging. Diffuse stellar halos around galaxies are formed primarily thanks to this process, and thus encode unique information about the merger history of...

With thousands of known transiting exoplanets, many as small as the Earth, our detection capabilities are beginning to border on that necessary to detect the largest moons found in our solar system. Exomoons would offer new opportunities to...

Machine learning has found increasing use in astronomy over the last few years. In this talk, instead of discussing machine learning itself, I will discuss how a mathematical tool borrowed from machine learning - auto-differentiation - can be put to...

What governs whether large-scale planetary habitability is sustained through time? Lakes, valley networks, groundwaters, hydrothermal systems, and chemically open-system weathering once existed on Mars. The suite of aqueous environments preserved in...

Soon after the launch of the ESA Solar Orbiter in February 2020 it was suggested that the spacecraft would have flown through the ion and dust tails of comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) just after perihelion, while its nucleus was at 0.25 Astronomical Units...

Abstract: Guided by the principles of effective field theory, I will discuss three consecutive avenues to constrain physics beyond General Relativity with black-hole observations.

1) Shadows: Without specifying any particular gravitational dynamics...

Abstract 1: In recent years, weak lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has emerged as a powerful tool to probe fundamental physics. The prime target of CMB lensing surveys is the lensing potential, which is reconstructed from observed...

Each week, we hold a relatively informal seminar/discussion series with an emphasis on extra-galactic and large-scale structure astrophysics.

During Galread a leader/visitor presents a recent paper to the discussion group. The PDF of the paper is...