March 18, 2025

Speaker: Kareem El-Badry (Caltech)

Contact Information: 

Title:  The Gaia binary star revolution

Abstract: By precisely measuring the motions stars on the sky over time, the Gaia mission is conducting a comprehensive census of the Milky Way's binary stars. These data are transformative both for population modeling and for discovery of rare objects. I will describe our emerging view of the populations of black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs in au-scale binaries, focusing in particular on their mass, period, and eccentricity distributions. Compared to previous surveys, Gaia is revealing post-interaction binaries in wider orbits, whose properties are difficult to explain with standard binary evolution models. I will discuss how the Gaia catalogs can be leveraged for statistical inference, despite their complex selection function, and how they can discriminate between competing formation models.

Visitor's room: Peyton 129

Visit Schedule:

Monday Mar 17 (Please note this changed from Tuesday Mar 18 previously)

• 9:30 a.m.: Linhao Ma (Peyton 107)

• 10:00 a.m:  Adam Burrows (Peyton 105)

• 10:30 a.m.:  Coffee

• 11:00 a.m.: Josh Winn (Peyton 125)

• 11:30 a.m.: Dongzi Li (Peyton 109)

• 12:00 p.m.: Lunch

• 12:30 p.m.: Lunch

• 1:00 p.m.:  Jenny Greene (Peyton 001)

• 1:30 p.m.: Minghao Guo 

• 2:00 p.m.: Philipp Kempski

• 2:30 p.m.: Chang-Goo Kim (Peyton 111)

• 3:00 p.m.: Amir Siraj

• 3:30 p.m.: Caleb Lammers

• 4:00 p.m.:  Robel Geda

• 4:30 p.m.:  Tea Time with Grad Students in Grand Central 

• 5:00 p.m.: Tea Time with Grad Students in Grand Central 

Dinner Sign-up - add your name here:

Day of week (DD MMM. 2024) MONDAY MARCH 17.  Dinner is at Lan Ramen at 6:15 PM.  

1. Faculty Host: Eve Ostriker

2. Robel Geda

3. Caleb Lammers

4. Amir Siraj

5. Minghao Guo

6. Philippe Yao

7.  Hanpu Liu

8.  Speaker

STUDENTS HAVE PRIORITY.

PLEASE NO MORE THAN 8 PEOPLE (it is more difficult to properly interact with the speaker in larger groups).