Joint IAS Princeton University Astrophysics Colloquium

In this talk, I will give the 2020 summary of the 6.5 meter James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the near--mid-IR sequel to both Hubble and Spitzer. All hardware has been built, and is in the final stages of testing for its launch scheduled in October...

One of the key objectives of modern astrophysics is to understand the formation and evolution galaxies. In this regard, the Milky Way is a critical testing ground for our theories of galaxy formation. However, dissecting the assembly history of the...

Why do many stars host close-in chains of super-Earths? Why are eccentric gas giants found in some inner planetary systems? What determines which of these outcomes will occur around a particular star? I will present a possible framework for...

Why do many stars host close-in chains of super-Earths? Why are eccentric gas giants found in some inner planetary systems? What determines which of these outcomes will occur around a particular star? I will present a possible framework for...

Spektr-RG spacecraft with Russian (ART-XC) and German (eRosita) X-Ray telescopes was launched on July 13th of 2019 from Baykonur. During the flight to the L2 point of the Sun-Earth system, SRG performed calibrations and detailed long duration...

I will discuss insights from analytic and numerical models of galactic chemical evolution and observations of Milky Way elemental abundances from the SDSS APOGEE survey. Under generic model assumptions, abundances and abundance ratios approach an...

In the solar system as elsewhere, we learn most from the unexpected. I will describe three recent observational projects challenging existing ideas about solar system objects, and provoking new ones. The freaks are an interstellar object (‘Oumuamua)...

Building genuinely a priori models of galaxy formation in a cosmological context is one of the grand challenges of modern astrophysics. Most large volume simulations of galaxy formation currently adopt phenomenological scaling relations to model...

Surveys of young stellar objects (YSOs) populating nearby molecular clouds are bringing us closer to an integrated picture of star and cluster formation, one that incorporates processes spanning many orders of magnitude in size, from accretion on...