Summer Student Talks

Casey Lam

Thursday, June 27, 2024 - 01:00pm

Finding Quiet Black Holes in the Milky Way

Although they sound like science fiction, black holes are real---they are formed from the deaths of massive stars. In fact, there are expected to be 100 million of them in our Milky Way alone! Astronomers are interested in studying these stellar-mass black holes, but how can you study something that, by definition, is not visible? I'll talk about some of the ways we can find and learn about these elusive objects.

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Nondh Panithanpaisal

Thursday, July 3, 2024 - 11:00am

Near-field Cosmology with Dwarf Galaxy Stellar Streams

Recent advancements in astronomical observations allow us to detect populations of disrupted dwarf galaxies, so called dwarf galaxy stellar streams, around the Milky Way and external galaxies. At the same time, cosmological baryonic simulations now have enough particle resolution to resolve dwarf galaxy streams down to stellar masses of ~5x10^5 solar masses. In combination, we can start to explore, analyze, and model dwarf galaxy streams that have evolved in the full cosmological environments for the first time. In this talk, I will introduce the catalog of dwarf galaxy stellar streams identified in FIRE simulations. This set of simulated streams can be used to study near-field cosmology, dark matter, and the formation history of the Milky Way. As an extension of the famous "missing satellite" problem, we can now compare populations of disrupted satellites in simulations and observations. I will end the talk with an overview of how we might use stellar streams to distinguish between different dark matter models.

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Mike Grudić

Thursday, July 11, 2024 - 01:00pm

Making Stars On Computers

Stars are fundamentally-important building blocks of galaxies and home to planets, but astronomers have a dirty secret: we don't really understand how they form. I will outline the basic story of star formation that we do know from observations, and then point out some basic questions about that we still haven't answered. The challenge is that star-forming gas flows are very complex, and subject to a wide variety of different physical processes acting in concert. This physics problem is impossible to do with a pen and paper, so instead we take the list of equations and solve them on supercomputers. I will outline how this is done: breaking up the gas cloud into discrete elements, formulating the equations of motion in discrete form, and stepping the cloud forward in time as it collapses and forms stars. Finally, I will present our new state-of-the-art simulations - STARFORGE - and share some exciting new insights on the big questions of star formation.

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Jason Williams

Thursday, July 25, 2024 - 01:30pm

Detecting atmospheres through Earth's atmosphere

We are currently living in the golden age of exoplanet discovery. With the over 5000 exoplanets that have been discovered, the next forefront of exoplanet science is to begin characterization of these planets. A planet's atmosphere holds a wealth of information about a planet and is therefore the final step in planetary characterization. In this talk I will discuss how astronomers detect and characterize exoplanet atmospheres and the design of a new instrument being developed here at Carnegie to observe exoplanet atmospheres at unprecedented spectrophotometric precisions.

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Maren Cosens

Friday, August 8, 2024 - 01:00pm

Designing Instruments for the World's Largest Telescopes

Developing new instrumentation is fundamental to advancing our understanding of the universe. By pushing the boundaries of what we can do with our existing telescopes we enable new measurements from the composition of atmospheres around extra-solar planets to the metal content of galaxies in the early universe. I will talk about the different types of instruments that we use and the ongoing design of a next generation instrument being developed here at Carnegie: the Magellan InfraRed Multi-Object Spectrograph (MIRMOS). I will also talk about how I combine working on both instruments and observations. The two are intrinsically linked with work in one often befitting from the other, but combining these focus areas in practice can be a careful balance.

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Nicole Sanchez

Tuesday, August 13, 2024 - 01:00pm

Galaxies, Supermassive Black Holes, & the Circumgalactic Medium

In this talk, Nicole will discuss the theory of galaxy evolution and how we use computer simulations of the universe to understand the way that galaxies grow and evolve. Objects like supermassive black holes and stars play a role in the shaping of galaxies and she will discuss the way that different components of galaxies like the stellar disk and the gas halo respond to the energetic phenomenon that impact galaxies throughout their lives. 

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Jhon Yana Galarza

Thursday, August 15, 2024 - 01:00pm

TBA