Departmental Colloquium

Speaker: Michela Negro (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/UMBC) Title: High Energy Transient Repeaters: The Case of Gamma-ray Bursts From Magnetar Abstract: Started in the ’60s with the detection of the first cosmological gamma-ray burst by the Vela satellites the astrophysics of high-energy transients has fascinated the community for more than half a century. Gamma-ray burst

Speaker: Shobita Satyapal (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/UMBC) Title: In Search of Elusive AGNs in Low Mass Galaxies and Mergers Abstract: Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centers of galaxies, which manifest as active galactic nuclei (AGNs) when accreting, are now known to be a fundamental component of galaxies and play an important role in their evolution. Detecting complete samples of AGNs and

Speaker: Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil (University of Chicago) Title: The Smallest and Faintest Galaxies: The New Frontier in Dark Matter and Galaxy Formation Studies Abstract: The smallest and faintest galaxies around the Milky Way are the most ancient, most metal-poor, and most dark-matter-dominated systems known. These extreme objects offer unique access to small scales where the stellar and dark matter content can be studied simultaneously. They hold

Speaker: Chris Ashall (University of Hawai'i) Title: The Variety of Thermonuclear Supernova Abstract: Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) mark the demise of white dwarfs (WD). These cosmic explosions release as much luminous energy as the sun produces over its entire lifetime. As cauldrons of nucleosynthesis, SNe Ia provide the interstellar medium with Fe-group elements and

Speaker: David Nataf (Johns Hopkins University) Title: On the Milky Way’s Extinction Curve and Oldest Stellar Populations Abstract: The study of Galactic astronomy is being revolutionized by the plethora of incredible data from various new surveys, facilities, and the use of modern probabilistic methods.  In this talk of two parts, I first describe efforts to

Speaker: Svea Hernandez (Space Telescope Science Institute) Title: Uncovering the History of Galaxies and Metals by Exploiting the Power of Nearby Laboratories Abstract: Precise metallicities and chemical abundances of the different components in galaxies are critical for understanding galaxy formation, feedback and interstellar/intergalactic chemical enrichment. I take advantage of the unique FUV spectroscopic capabilities of

Speaker: Chao-Chin Yang (UNLV) Title: From Pebbles to Planets: A Tale of Protoplanetary Disks and Planetsimal Formation Abstract: Even though thousands of extrasolar planetary systems have been detected, a comprehensive picture of how planets are formed from their natal protoplanetary disks remains to be drawn.  One of the most challenging stages is the formation of kilometer-scale planetesimals from