Colloquia Schedule Fall 2015

Colloquia are on Tuesdays (unless otherwise indicated) at 3:30 pm in RLM 15.216B


Sep. 1	No Colloquium scheduled.
Sep. 8	"Convection in Cool Stars, as Revealed through Stellar Brightness Variations" abstract Fabienne Bastien Pennsylvania State University host: Adam Kraus or Bill Cochran
Sep. 15	"Compact Objects in Globular Clusters" abstract Thomas Maccarone Texas Tech host: Karl Gebhardt
Sep. 22	"Convection in Low-Mass Stellar Evolution, or 'What about magnetic fields?' " abstract Gregory Feiden University of Uppsala, Sweden host: Andrew Mann
Sep. 29	"Tracing the Cosmic Shutdown of Star Formation in Massive Galaxies" abstract Katherine Whitaker Hubble Fellow, UMass Amherst host: Steve Finkelstein
Oct. 6	"The Assembly of Disk Galaxies" abstract Susan Kassin Space Telescope Science Institute host: Rachael Livermore
Oct. 13	*"Are we Correctly Measuring Star Formation Rates?"* abstract Kristen McQuinn University of Texas at Austin host: Adam Kraus
Oct. 20	No Colloquium Scheduled, to avoid conflict with: Bashfest 2015: Frank N. Bash Symposium 2015, October 18-20, 2015 Speaker: Dr. Frank N. Bash and invited speakers "New Horizons in Astronomy"
Oct. 27	Tinsley Scholar: Interstellar Group (visiting: Oct 25-31) "The Impact of Stellar Feedback on Molecular Clouds" abstract Stella Offner Affiliation: University of Massachusetts, Amherst host: Neal Evans
Nov. 3	Tinsley Scholar: Theory Group (visiting: late Oct - early Nov) "Disk Dynamos: Understanding the Origin of Galacic Magnetic Fields" abstract Ethan Vishniac Johns Hopkins University host: TBD
Nov. 10	"From TripleSpec to NEWS: Exoplanet Discovery Science with Bread and Butter Infrared Spectroscopy" abstract Philip S. Muirhead Boston University host: Adam Kraus
Nov. 17	"New Insights on Galaxy Formation from Comparisons of Simulated and Observed Galaxies" abstract Joel R. Primack UC Santa Cruz host: Paul Shapiro
Nov. 24	No colloquium scheduled.
Dec. 1	DeVaucouleurs Medalist "Expansion of the Universe Seen by Hubble" The Hubble constant remains one of the most important parameters in the cosmological model, setting the size and age scales of the Universe. Present uncertainties in the cosmological model including the nature of dark energy, the properties of neutrinos and the scale of departures from flat geometry can be constrained by measurements of the Hubble constant made to higher precision than was possible with the first generations of Hubble Telescope instruments. Streamlined distances ladders constructed from infrared observations of Cepheids and type Ia supernovae with ruthless attention paid to systematics now provide 3.5% precision and offer the means to do much better. We will discuss a new round of improvements to the measurement of the Hubble constant including additional observations of Cepheids in recent SN hosts and a new technique, Parallel Astrometric Spatial Scanning (PASS), to measure parallax distances beyond a kiloparsec. close Adam Riess Johns-Hopkins University, and Space Telescope Science Institute, and DeVaucouleurs Medalist host: Shardha Jogee, Chair
Dec. 8	"Supernovae and their Progenitor Systems (or lack thereof)" abstract Ori Fox Space Telescope Science Institute host: Jeff Silverman