Meeting Time and Format
During Fall and Spring terms, the Astrophysics Seminar/Journal Club meets
- Wednesdays and Fridays 2:00-3:00 p.m. in 200 Gallalee Hall
Anyone in the department may attend.
On Wednesday’s we participate in the live broadcast of colloquium talks hosted by NASA/AURA’s Space Telescope Science Institute. The schedule for the talks is available on the Space Telescope Science Institute website.
The Friday meeting consists of two segments:
- 20-minute talk (+10 minute discussion)
- article summary and discussion (5-10 minutes)
Volunteering for Article Summaries
Please send your articles to Dean Townsley and Preethi Nair.
Please propose articles that are fairly recent (within a few months or so), are of interest to you, and you feel you can digest and summarize well. Check out the list of previously presented articles.
Where to Find Articles
- astro-ph on arXiv: “the firehose,” raw and unfettered
- The Astrophysical Journal: the main U.S. journal for astrophysics
- The Astrophysical Journal: Letters: short articles selected to highlight topics of broad interest
- The Astronomical Journal: complement of ApJ with slightly more observation-oriented content
- Astronomy and Astrophysics: main European journal, letters section at the beginning of each issue, each issue sectioned by topic (not all topics appear in each issue)
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: main British journal, also has a letters section.
- Astroparticle Physics: some IceCube results are published here, also a good place for dark matter and cosmic ray work
- Physical Review D: broader scope — this is the Physical Review section that includes particle astrophysics and cosmology
Topics for Spring 2026
| Date | Talk (Speaker, Article) | Summary (Speaker, Article) |
|---|---|---|
| 1/9 | organizational | |
| 1/16 | Nethra Rajavel “It’s always the quiet ones: Single Degenerate Double Detonation Type Ia Supernova from Quiescent Helium Accretion” Michaelis et al. (arXiv:2510.20904) Praphull Kumar “Seismology and diffusion of ultramassive white dwarf magnetic fields” Blatman et al. (2025MNRAS.542.2345B) | |
| 1/23 | Elizabeth Warrick discussing “A song of lines and winds: Tracing the signatures of AGN outflows in X-rays” Laurenti et al. (2026 A&A, 705, A240) | Vaidehi Poojyam “Log-normal flux distribution of bright Fermi blazars” Shah et al. (2018RAA….18..141S) |
| 1/30 | Mason Footh Discussing “Wind-fed Supermassive Black Hole Accretion in the Ultracompact Dwarf Galaxy M60-UCD1” Su, Li, & Hou (arXiv:2601.09199) | Sricharan Balaji “Planet–Planet Scattering and Von Zeipel–Lidov–Kozai Migration—The Dynamical History of HAT-P-11” Lu et al. (2025ApJ…979..218L) Izaiha Martinez “Forging neon-distilling white dwarfs in the stellar engulfments of helium white dwarfs” Rui & Fuller (arXiv:2601.00072) |
| 2/6 | Peter Gwartney Discussing “Bar formation in disc galaxies: internal kinematics and environmental influence in MaNGA galaxies” Aquino-Ortiz et al. (arXiv:2512.21303) | Mason Footh “BASS. LIV. Physical Properties of AGN-hosting Galaxy Mergers from Multiwavelength SED Fitting” Troncoso et al. (2025ApJ…994..181T) Elizabeth Warrick “Line-driven disc wind model for ultrafast outflows in active galactic nuclei – scaling with luminosity” Nomura & Ohsuga (2017MNRAS.465.2873N) |
| 2/13 | Maggie Kuffskie Discussing “TESS Giants Transiting Giants. VII. A Hot Saturn Orbiting an Oscillating Red Giant Star” Saunders et al. (2025AJ….169…75S) | |
| 2/20 | Vaidehi Poojyam Discussing “Systematic Search for Long-term Trends in Fermi-LAT Jetted Active Galactic Nuclei” Peñil et al. (2025ApJ…980…38P) | Sanchari Kundu “Seyfert Galaxies as Neutrino Sources: An Outflow−Cloud Interaction Perspective” Ma et al. (arXiv:2511.06707) Peter Gwartney “Living with Neighbors. VI. Unraveling the Dual Impact of Bars on Star Formation in Paired Galaxies Using DESI” Zee & Yoon (2025ApJ…994..269Z) |
| 2/27 | Urooba Shaikh Discussing “An Archival Search for Neutron-star Mergers in Gravitational Waves and Very-high-energy Gamma Rays” Adams et al. (2021ApJ…918…66A) | Sabnam Shrestha “Connecting Cores and Black Hole Dynamics across Scales: From Globular Clusters to Massive Ellipticals” Kremer et al. (2025ApJ…993L..34K) Mustafa Muhibullah “Chandra Rules Out Super-Eddington Accretion Models for Little Red Dots” Sacchi & Bogdan (2025ApJ…989L..30S) |
| 3/6 | Praphull Kumar Discussing “Magnetic Field Evolution for Crystallization-driven Dynamos in C/O White Dwarfs” Castro-Tapia, Zhang, & Cumming (2024ApJ…975…63C) | Niranjan Ashok “Tidal features as tracers of galaxy merger histories: the colours of tidal features in HSC-SSP” Desmons et al. (2026MNRAS.546ag203D) |
| 3/13 | Izaiha Martinez “Accretion Rates & Lifetimes of Protoplanetary Disks” Drawing from Alcala et al. (2017A&A…600A..20A), Ansdell et al. (2016ApJ…828…46A), Manara et al. (2016A&A…591L…3M), Hartmann & Bae (2018MNRAS.474…88H) Mustafa Muhibullah “HyperSoft X-ray Sources: Multiwavelength Signatures, Spatial Distribution, and Luminosity” (original research) | |
| 3/20 | (spring break, no meeting) | — |
| 3/27 | Niranjan Ashok Discussing “Stellar streams in the Gaia era” Bonaca & Price-Whelan (2025NewAR.10001713B) | Jeremiah Reynoso “Can GRB 250702B be explained as the tidal disruption of a white dwarf by an intermediate mass black hole? Yes” Eyles-Ferris et al. (2026MNRAS.546ag005E) Matthew Marsee “Rapid jet ejection from PKS 0215+015 coincident with a high-energy neutrino event” Eppel et al. (arXiv:2603.02325) |
| 4/3 | (honors day, no meeting) | — |
| 4/10 | Sabnam Shrestha “Ultramassive Black Holes in Brightest Cluster Galaxies” Based on de Nicola et al. (arXiv:2603.01827) and de Nicola et al. (arXiv:2512.04178) | Urooba Shaikh “The spectral analysis of GRB 150902A and the nature of its outflow” Nawaz & Sajjad (2022MNRAS.516.4180N) Luke Bloom “GRB 221009A: Observations with LST-1 of CTAO and Implications for Structured Jets in Long Gamma-Ray Bursts” Abe et al. (2025ApJ…988L..42A) |
| 4/17 | Jeremiah Reynoso Discussing “Automated classification of Chandra X-ray point sources using machine learning methods” Kumaran et al. (2023MNRAS.520.5065K) Matthew Marsee Discussing “Evidence for Neutrino Emission from X-Ray-bright Active Galactic Nuclei with IceCube” Abbasi et al. (2026ApJ..1000L..26A) | |
| 4/24 | Sricharan Balaji
“Modeling orbital evolution of Hot and Warm Jupiters with stellar mass loss and equilibrium tides.” (original research) | Annelia Anderson “The Fate of the Milky Way─Andromeda System: To Merge or Not?” Wu, Huag, & Zhang (2026ApJ..1001L..19W) Maggie Kuffskie “TOI-1173 A b: The First Inflated Super-Neptune in a Wide Binary System” Yana Galarza et al. (2024AJ….168…91Y) |
Talks at other times: Nethra Rajavel,
- Annelia Anderson – “The Circumgalactic Dictionary: An Interpretation Guide for Circumgalactic Medium Observations” (April 2, 4:00pm, GL 338)
- Luke Bloom – “Particle Trajectory Reconstruction with Multi-PMT Optical Modules in the IceCube Upgrade” (April 6, 11:30am, GL 328)
- Sanchari Kundu – “Probing particle acceleration in AGN using very-high-energy observations” (April 8, 9:30am, GL 329)