Astrophysics Seminars

Apr
11
2013

Institute for Advanced Study Informal Astrophysics Seminar

Orbital Evolution of the Satellites of Saturn
Matija Cuk
11:00am|Bloomberg Hall, Astrophysics Library
ABSTRACT: Saturn's regular satellites exhibit a number of orbital anomalies, including the relatively high eccentricity of Titan, large inclination of Iapetus and surprisingly evolved Titan-Hyperion resonance. Recently, Lainey et al.(2012)...
Apr
09
2013

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

The Role of Magnetic Fields in Star Formation
Chris McKee
11:00am|Bloomberg Hall Astrophysics Library
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...
Apr
04
2013

Institute for Advanced Study Informal Astrophysics Seminar

Photodynamics: Revealing the Secrets of the Lowest-mass Planets and Stars
Josh Carter
11:00am|Bloomberg Hall, Astrophysics Library
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...
Mar
28
2013

Institute for Advanced Study Informal Astrophysics Seminar

The Physics of Radiatively-Driven Dusty Winds
Mark Krumholz
11:00am|Bloomberg Hall, Astrophysics Library
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...
Mar
26
2013

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

The Wobbly Galaxy: Kinematics North and South with RAVE
Matthias Steinmetz
11:00am|Bloomberg Hall Astrophysics Library
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...
Mar
21
2013

Institute for Advanced Study Informal Astrophysics Seminar

The Source of Gravity in Newtonian and Relativistic Cosmology
Ed Spiegel
11:00am|Bloomberg Hall, Astrophysics Library
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...
Mar
19
2013

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Super-Earth or Super-Venus?
James Lloyd
11:00am|Bloomberg Hall Astrophysics Library
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...
Mar
12
2013

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Cold Accretion, Hot Feedback, and the Bimodal Metallicity Distribution in the Circumgalactic Media of Galaxies at z < 1
Todd Tripp
11:00am|Bloomberg Hall Astrophysics Library
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...