Joint IAS Princeton University Astrophysics Colloquium

After 50 years of dreaming about it, space-based microlensing observations are now underway. A 2014 100-hr Spitzer Pilot Program generated "microlens parallaxes" for dozens of lenses, opening the prospect of measuring the Galactic distribution of...

A combination of sub-mm observations and numerical simulations have the potential to yield direct constraints on the environment of planet formation. After a review of recent observational surprises, I will discuss the implications of our first...

After a basic introduction on how asteroseismology works in practice, we illustrate its application to various kinds of stars of different mass and evolutionary stage. We show how detected oscillation modes allow us to understand details of the...

Recent Spitzer observations have revealed presence of near-IR excesses in spectra of more than thirty white dwarfs with atmospheres enriched in metals. These excesses are naturally interpreted as reprocessing of the stellar emission by compact...

The increasing role of general relativity in the dynamics of stellar systems with central massive black holes, in the generation of extreme mass-ratio inspirals, and in the evolution of hierarchical triple systems inspires a close examination of how...

Planetesimals are the building blocks of planets. They can be traced by the dust they produce in collisions or sublimation that forms a debris disk. In the solar system, such a dust disk is produced by the asteroids, comets and Kuiper Belt objects...

We know that most stars, if not all, were once surrounded by protoplanetary disks. How these young disks evolve into planetary systems is a fundamental question in astronomy. Observations of T Tauri stars (TTS) may provide insights into this...