Summer Student Talks

Casey Lam

Thursday, June 26, 2025 - 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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Ana Bonoca

Thursday, July 10, 2025 - 01:00pm

How to Catch a Dark Matter Clump (Without Ever Seeing It)

Many lines of evidence suggest that the universe is filled with an invisible dark matter, but its nature remains elusive. Is dark matter a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP)? Is it "cold" (CDM) or "warm" (WDM)? Does the dark matter particle have a significant cross-section for self-interaction (SIDM)? Is dark matter wave-like (FDM)? Laboratory experiments have yielded no direct detection of dark matter so far, however distinguishing these scenarios may be possible by measuring the structure of dark matter on scales smaller than a galaxy. I will describe how we are combining detailed kinematics of stars in the Milky Way halo with statistical modeling techniques to detect small clumps of dark matter and determine its nature.

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Luke Bouma

Wednesday, July 16, 2025 - 01:00pm

Young Transiting Exoplanets

Over the past decade, Kepler, Gaia, and TESS have revolutionized our understanding of exoplanets and their host stars.  A major goal is now to identify the processes that sculpt the observed exoplanet population.  I'll describe the key technologies that have fueled exoplanet discovery over the past few decades and highlight recent breakthroughs in the field.  My own work emphasizes the role of young exoplanets in building a timeline for exoplanet evolution; I'll summarize how we are achieving this both by discovering exoplanets (& measuring their properties) and through measuring the ages of stars.  I'll close by outlining the major open questions, which also point to areas of opportunity.

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Jack Piotrowski

Wednesday, July 23, 2025 - 01:30pm

Magellan: Carnegie’s Twin Southern Explorers

The Magellan Telescopes, dubbed Baade and Clay, are a set of optically identical 6.5-meter telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory outside La Serena, Chile. These world-class telescopes are the scientific engines of the Carnegie community, enabling a strong astrophysics research portfolio over the past three decades. This talk will cover how the Magellan telescopes work and what makes them unique in the current landscape of ground-based observatories. The utility of these telescopes is deeply intertwined with their instrument suite. I will provide an overview of the existing instruments, their corresponding scientific goals, and a look into the future of Magellan instrumentation over the next decade. 

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Mandy Chen

Thursday, July 31, 2025 - 01:00pm

Unveiling Turbulence Drivers in Quasar Halos: Insights from IFS Observations

The recent advent of high-throughput integral-field-unit spectrographs (IFS) has enabled unprecedented sensitivity in mapping low-density gas, opening new avenues for probing the dynamical states of the interstellar and circumgalactic medium (ISM and CGM).  In this talk, I will present an investigation into turbulence and energy injection mechanisms in luminous quasar halos across redshifts 0.5<z<3, leveraging data from VLT/MUSE and JWST/NIRSpec IFU. By analyzing velocity structure functions (VSFs) of the extended ISM and CGM, we demonstrate how AGN-driven outflows and jet-induced bubbles primarily inject energy at scales <10 kpc, while larger-scale processes such as tidal interactions and galaxy mergers dominate energy injection further away from the central engine.  In addition, elevated VSF amplitudes near halo centers reveal a stronger influence of AGN feedback in these regions.  These findings provide empirical constraints on the scale-dependent mechanisms of energy injection and feedback in quasar environments, offering new insights into their role in shaping galaxy evolution across cosmic time. 

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Nicole Sanchez

Tuesday, August 5, 2025 - 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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Jason Williams

Thursday, August 14, 2025 - 01:00pm

TBA

Abstract TBA