Date

Speaker

Title

Aug 28

Neal Evans

University of Texas at Austin

Organizational Meeting.

Sept 4

John Lacy

University of Texas at Austin

"Molecular Hydrogen in the Galactic Center and Molecular Clouds"

Sept 11

Harriet Dinerstein, Hwihyun Kim, and Kyle Kaplan

University of Texas at Austin

"Photodissociation Regions at 30" Conference and some on IAU315"

Sept 18

Adam McKay

University of Texas at Austin

"Comet Update!"

Sept 25

No meeting scheduled. (TAURS+ BAT-2015 at Texas A&M)

Oct 2

No talk scheduled.

Oct 9

John Scalo

University of Texas at Austin

"Why Dense Cores Collapse: A Thermodynamic Model with Definite Predictions"

Oct 16

Samuel Factor

University of Texas at Austin

"ALMA Observations of Molecular Gas Emission from a Protoplanetary Disk in the Orion Nebula"

Oct 23

Emma Yu

University of Texas at Austin

"Probing Giant-Planet-Forming Regions with Rare CO Isotopologues, and Updates from Recent disk Conferences"

Oct 30

Stella Offner, Tinsley Scholar (2014-15)

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"Toolkits for Turbulence"

Turbulence in the interstellar medium is ubiquitous and self-similar across a broad range of scales. However, molecular clouds display significant variation in bulk properties, ongoing star formation, and morphology. It seems highly likely that these differences impact the turbulent properties of the gas and leave signatures - but if so they are difficult to identify observationally. A variety of statistics have been proposed in the literature for application to emission line data cubes for the purpose of characterizing cloud kinematics (e.g. principle component analysis, the spectral correlation function, and probability distribution functions). In this talk, I will discuss how "synthetic observations", in which the emission from simulated molecular clouds is calculated via radiative transfer post-processing, can be used to evaluate the utility of statistics. I will present results for a variety of metrics and assess their sensitivity to changes in physical cloud properties and stellar feedback.

close

Nov 6

Marshall Johnson

University of Texas at Austin

"The McDonald View of a Nearby Planetary System"

Nov 13

Aaron Rizutto

University of Texas at Austin

"Sco-Cen as an Astrophysical Laboratory"

Nov 20

Ryan Oelkers

Texas A&M University

"A Wide Angle Search for Hot Jupiters and Pre-Main Sequence Binaries in Young Stellar Associations"

abstract

Nov 27

Day after Thanksgiving Holiday. UT Closed. No talks scheduled.

Dec 4

No talk scheduled.