Meeting Time and Format
During Fall and Spring terms, the Astrophysics Seminar/Journal Club meets
- Wednesdays and Fridays from 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 2024
| Date | Talk (Speaker, Article) | Summary (Speaker, Article) |
|---|---|---|
| 1/12 | Organize Schedule
Sam Boos |
|
| 1/19 | Praphull Kumar
“Evolution of double oxygen-neon white dwarf merger remnant” Wu et al. (2023MNRAS.525.6295W) Jacob Morgan “The Halo21 Absorption Modeling Challenge: Lessons From “Observing” Synthetic Circumgalactic Absorption Spectra” Hafen et al. (arXiv:2305.01842) |
|
| 1/26 | Anna Parul
“Data-driven Dynamics with Orbital Torus Imaging: A Flexible Model of the Vertical Phase Space of the Galaxy” Price-Whelan et al. (arXiv:2401.07903) |
RileyAnne Sharpe
“First Detection of an Overmassive Black Hole Galaxy UHZ1: Evidence for Heavy Black Hole Seed Formation from Direct Collapse” Natarajan et al. (2024ApJ…960L…1N) |
| 2/2 | Mustafa Muhibulla
“HyperSoft X-ray Sources: A Novel Species of Extremely Faint X-ray Emitters” (original work) |
Peter Gwartney
“The Frequency and Sizes of Inner Bars and Nuclear Rings in Barred Galaxies and Their Dependence on Galaxy Properties” Erwin (doi:10.1093/mnras/stad3944) Mason Footh “Discovery of a Planar Black Hole Mass Scaling Relation for Spiral Galaxies” Davis & Jin (2023ApJ…956L..22D) |
| 2/9 | RileyAnne Sharpe
“The spectra of IceCube Neutrino (SIN) candidate sources” 4-paper series: 2021MNRAS.504.3338P, 2022MNRAS.510.2671P, 2023MNRAS.521.2270P, 2023MNRAS.526..661K |
Anna Parul
“On the metal-poor edge of the Milky Way “thin disc”” Fernández-Alvar et al. (arXiv:2402.02943) Ava Ghadimi “Long-term study of the 2020 magnetar-like outburst of the young pulsar PSRJ1846-0258 in Kes 75” Sathyaprakash et al. (arXiv:2401.08010) |
| 2/16 | Ved Iyer
“The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-wave Background” The NANOGrav Collaboration (2023ApJ…951L…8A) Jacob Morgan “The physical origins of gas in the circumgalactic medium using observationally-motivated TNG50 mocks” Weng et al. (2024MNRAS.527.3494W) |
Elizabeth Warrick
“Citizen Science for IceCube: Name that Neutrino” Abbasi et al. (arXiv:2401.11994)
|
| 2/23 | Sricharan Balaji
“The baroclinic instability in the context of layered accretion. Self-sustained vortices and their magnetic stability in local compressible unstratified models of protoplanetary disks” Lyra & Klahr (2011A&A…527A.138L) |
Mustafa Muhibulla
“X-ray detection of a nova in the fireball phase” König et al. (2022Natur.605..248K) Ved Iyer “Implications of pulsar timing array observations for LISA detections of massive black hole binaries” Steinle et al. (2023MNRAS.525.2851S) |
| 3/1 | Sanchari Kundu
“VERITAS Discovery of Very High Energy Gamma-Ray Emission from S3 1227+25 and Multiwavelength Observations” The VERITAS Collaboration et al. (2023ApJ…950..152A) Mason Footh “The Relation Between AGN and Host Galaxy Properties: I. Obscured AGN reside in disturbed hosts at 0<z<4” Bonavetura et al. (arXiv:2401.07863) |
Sam Boos
“Emission lines due to ionizing radiation from a compact object in the remnant of Supernova 1987A” Fransson et al. (2024 Science, 383, 898) |
| 3/8 | Lucas Bloom
“Search for Galactic core-collapse supernovae in a decade of data taken with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory” IceCube Collaboration (2024ApJ…961…84A) |
Annelia Anderson
“Computer analysis of some ancient Chinese sunrise eclipse records to determine the Earth’s rotation rate” Pang et al. (1988VA…..31..833P) |
| 3/15 | spring break – no meeting | |
| 3/22 | Matthew Marsee
“Search for neutrino emission from the Cygnus Bubble based on LHAASO γ-ray observations” Li et al. (arXiv:2402.17352) Nethra Rajavel “Constraining Supernova Ia Progenitors by Their Locations in Host Galactic Discs” Hakobyan et al. (2023ARep…67S.164H) |
Celly Jimenez
“A population of faint, old, and massive quiescent galaxies at 3 <z <4 revealed by JWST NIRSpec Spectroscopy” Nanayakkara et al. (2024NatSR..14.3724N) |
| 3/29 | Linn Eriksson (Stonybrook and Flatiron/CCA)
“Towards three-dimensional simulations of planetesimal formation at planetary gap edges” |
Lucas Bloom
“General Circulation Model Constraints on the Detectability of the CO2-CH4 Biosignature Pair on TRAPPIST-1e with JWST” Rotman et al (2023ApJ…942L…4R) Ryker von Klar “The Local Bubble is a Local Chimney: A New Model from 3D Dust Mapping” O’Neill et al. (arXiv:2403.04961) |
| 4/5 | honors day – no meeting | |
| 4/12 | Celly Jimenez
“AGN Selection and Demographics: A New Age with JWST/MIRI” Lyu et al. (arXiv:2310.12330) Elizabeth Warrick “The impact of void-finding algorithms on galaxy classification” Zaidouni et al. (arXiv:2403.20008) |
|
| 4/19 | Peter Gwartney
“The ALMaQUEST Survey XIV: do radial molecular gas flows affect the star-forming ability of barred galaxies?” Hogarth et al. (2024MNRAS.528.6768H) |
Sanchari Kundu
“TeV flaring activity of the AGN PKS 0625-354 in November 2018” HESS Collaboration (2024A&A…683A..70H) Matthew Marsee “Observation of Seven Astrophysical Tau Neutrino Candidates with IceCube” IceCube Collaboration (arXiv:2403.02516) Sricharan Balaji “Formation and structure of circumplanetary disks and envelopes during the late stages of giant planet formation” Taylor & Adams (2024Icar..41516044T) |
| 4/26 | Annelia Anderson
“The Circumgalactic Dictionary: An Interpretation Guide for Circumgalactic Medium Observations” (original research) Ryker von Klar “Simulating the Circumgalactic Medium” (original research) |
Nethra Rajavel
“Type Ia supernova explosion models are inherently multidimensional” Pakmor et al. (arXiv:2402.11010) |
In addition to these weekly meetings, several students chose to have the talk for their annual meeting with their dissertation committee be open:
- Sam Boos – Jan 25 – Double and Quadruple Detonation Type Ia Supernovae
- Ava Ghadimi – Feb 16 – Searching for Neutrinos from Magnetars
- Praphull Kumar – Mar 8 – Seismology of Accreting White Dwarf Stars