Astrophysics Seminars

The electromagnetic radiation observed following the neutron star (NS) merger event, that was recently detected by LIGO, provide constraints on the properties of the material ejected during the merger process. These constraints will be discussed in...

All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) scans the entire visible sky at daily cadence to search for bright transients, especially supernovae. Over the last few years, ASAS-SN has been the most productive survey at finding bright supernovae...

Studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation have driven the current era of precision cosmology. The tightest cosmological constraints to date have been derived from the primary CMB anisotropies, which predominantly probe the universe...

The merger of binaries consisting of a white dwarf (WD) and a neutron star (NS), though much less studied than their NS-NS/WD-WD brethren, are relatively common astrophysical events which may contribute to the transient sky. I will review the...

In this talk, I will discuss some of the constraints on planetary habitability that are regulated by the host star. The first factor is the role of the stellar wind and stellar flares in driving atmospheric erosion. It will be shown that low-mass M...

Cosmological observations have provided us with answers to age-old questions, involving the age, geometry, and composition of the universe. However, there are profound questions that still remain unanswered. I will describe ongoing efforts to shed...

Our traditional interpretative picture of the internal dynamics of globular clusters has been recently revolutionized by a series of discoveries about their chemical, structural, and kinematic properties. The empirical evidence that their velocity...

NOTE SPECIAL DATE! When the Solar System was formed in a young star cluster a nearby star might have exploded in a supernova. The repercussions of such an event can be rather profound, and the current Solar system may still bear the memory of this...

SPECIAL DATE AND TIME. The Evection is a "regular variation in the eccentricity of the Moon's orbit around the Earth, caused mainly by the Sun's attraction" (O.E.D.). It is the signature of a now weakened resonance between the period of apse...