Astrophysics Seminars

ABSTRACT: Magnetic forces in the diffuse interstellar medium are much greater than the forces due to self-gravitation, thereby precluding star formation there. Historically, it has been conjectured that ambipolar diffusion, in which neutral...

ABSTRACT: Eclipsing systems are famous for providing abundant opportunities to study the basic properties of stars and planets --- but eclipsing systems with more than two bodies present truly extraordinary opportunities. This is because non...

ABSTRACT: Radiation pressure on dust grains may be an important mechanism in driving winds in a wide variety of astrophysical environments, from the envelopes of red giants to young star clusters to starburst galaxies to the tori around AGN. I...

ABSTRACT: The RAVE survey is the largest systematic spectroscopic survey of the Milky Way performed to date. As of March 2013, almost 600 000 spectra for nearly 500 000 stars have been taken. At a resolution of R=7500 in the CA triplet region, RAVE...

ABSTRACT: There are two sides to every story and to most well constructed equations. In Poisson's equation and its generalization by Einstein we normally have on the left sides of those equations the descriptors of gravity and on the right its...

ABSTRACT: The rapid growth in discovery of transiting planets has resulted not only in an abundance of known extrasolar planets, but planets for which interior composition may be inferred by density and atmospheric composition inferred by absorption...

ABSTRACT: Theoretical studies have raised a number of important questions about the roles of gas inflows (accretion) and outflows (feedback) in galaxy evolution. Unfortunately, galactic gas flows are likely to have low densities and hence are...