Astro 504 -- Extragalactic Astronomy

Graduate Course in Galaxies, Their Evolution, and the Universe

Class Time: MWF 1:25 - 2:15 Class Room: 541 Davey Lab

Professor: Robin Ciardullo Office: 519 Davey Lab

Office Hours: MWF 2:30-4:00 or any other time Zoom Address: https://psu.zoom.us/j/3404085003

e-mail: rbc@astro.psu.edu Web page: https://sites.google.com/psu.edu/robin-ciardullo/teaching/astro-504

This course will cover topics in extragalactic astronomy and cosmology. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I will present the material in a traditional "lecture" format. On Fridays, we will discuss the current results of a topic in a "seminar" format. During these Fridays, the entire class will be expected to participate in an informed discussion. To facilitate these conversations, two students will be responsible for leading the discussion, and "encouraging" contributions from his/her classmates.

The final grade for the class will be based on class participation in the discussions (40%), performance on homework and the final project (30%) and the exams (30%).   

• Week 1:  Basic Formulae of Cosmology and Galactic Dynamcs

  • [No seminar topic]

• Week 2:  Galaxy Types and Classifications

  • Seminar topic:  Morphology of high-redshift galaxies

  • Starting point:  Measuring morphology of high-redshift galaxies is difficult, but progress is being made. Examples of papers are Cassata et al. 2005, MNRAS, 357, 903, Lotz et al. 2006, Ap.J., 592, 609, and Huertas-Company et al. 2008, arXiv:0811.1045

• Week 3:  Elliptical Galaxies

  • Seminar topic:  Current models for the formation of elliptical galaxiers

  • Starting point:  There has been tremendous progress in understanding the formation of elliptical galaxies. For the good, read Robertson et al. 2006, Ap.J., 641, 21 and Dekel & Cox 2006, MNRAS, 370, 1445. On the other hand, things are not as clear as they may seem -- see Douglas et al. 2007, Ap.J., 664, 257, and Napolitano et al. 2008, MNRAS, in press.

• Week 4:  Spiral and Irregular Galaxies

  • Seminar topic:  NFW models and low surface brightness galaxies

  • Starting point:   Perhaps the worst failure of the cold dark matter scenario is with low surface brightness galaxies. A good place to start on this topic is Kuzio de Naray et al. 2008, Ap.J., in press.

• Week 5:  The Tully-Fisher Relation

  • Seminar topic:  Scaling relations for disk galaxies

  • Seminar topic:  A nice paper on the scaling relations of spiral galaxies is Avila-Resse et al. 2008, A.J., 136, 1340. But for an alternative view of the universe, you can look at Sanders 2008, arXiv:0806.2585. (And, for fun, see Chris Mihos' contribution to the subject). 

• Week 6:  Quasar Absorption lines

  • Seminar topic:  The Gaseous halos of galaxies

  • Starting point:  Jane Charlton will be covering for me this week. She's picked out two papers: one on the high redshift IGM by Oppenheimer et al. 2009, arXiv:0901.0286 (submitted to MNRAS), and the other on the immediate surroundings of quasars by Kirkman & Tytler 2008, MNRAS, 391, 1457.

• Week 7:  Bulk Flows, Clustering, and Structure Formation

  • Seminar topic:  Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations

  • Starting point:  Perhaps the best way to measure the amount (and evolution) of Dark Energy in the universe is by tracing the imprint of Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations in the large-scale spatial distribution of galaxies. There are now many, many papers on this, but the ``classic'' references on the theory are Blake & Glazebrook 2003, Ap.J., 594, 665 and Seo & Eisenstein 2003, Ap.J., 598, 720. The first application of the procedure was in Eisenstein et al. 2005, Ap.J., 663, 560.

• Week 8:  Active Galactic Nuclei

  • Seminar topic:  The Broad-Line Regions of AGN

  • Starting point:  A defining feature of quasars is their broad-line region. For a concise statement of the problem presented by the lines, and ideas about how to solve it, read pg 390-398 of Julian Krolik's book "Active Galactic Nuclei" (Princeton University Press, 1999). It's in the library, but Mike Eracleous will make copies available and distribute them in class. Then, for a recent observational test, look at Laor et al. 2006, Ap.J., 636, 83.

• Week 9 and 10:  Emission-Line Physics

  • Seminar topic:  Metal-poor emission-line galaxies

  • Starting point:  Len Cowie, Esther Hu and collaborators are known for using Keck to find extremely high redshift galaxies. But in their search, they have also found a population of nearby, extremely low-metallicity galaxies. Their analysis is in Hu et al. 2009, arXiv:0902.0336, submitted to Ap.J. Note that this analysis uses the [O III] 4363 line, which is usually extremely difficult to detect. (To see how people deal with abundance measurements without this line, see Lin et al. 2007, A&A, 462, 535.)

• Week 11:  Photometric Evolution of Stellar Systems

  • Seminar topic:  Evolution of galaxy luminosities and colors

  • Starting point:  A nice examination of the model-dependencies in the population synthesis of early-type galaxies is given by Longhetti & Saracco 2009, MNRAS, 394, 774.

• Week 12:  Chemical Evolution of Galaxies

  • Seminar topic:  Chemical evolution in the Local Group

  • Starting point:  Studies of the detailed chemical evolution require high-quality data, so most analyses focus on in the Milky Way and its nearby surrounding dwarfs. But a nice study of M33 is given by Barker & Sarajedini 2008, MNRAS, 390, 863.

• Week 13:  Gravitational Lenses

  • Seminar topic:  Weak lensing and dark energy

  • Starting point:  There's an abundance of papers on all the applications of weak lensing. One of the more believeable studies on the use of weak lensing to map out dark matter is by Heymans et al. 2008, MNRAS, 385, 1431. (There are a number of papers like this, but most based on ground-based imaging. The fact that these authors are using HST data gives them a huge advantage -- with weak lensing, spatial resolution is extremely important!)

• Week 14:  The Physics of X-ray Gas

  • Seminar topic:  Metal Abundances and Masses of X-ray clusters

  • Starting point:  There amount of metals in the intracluster medium is large: in fact, the first measurements produce abundance estimates that were much greater than could be explained by any reasonable theory. But things are getting better. Two recent papers that do a good job addressing this problem are Sivanandm et al. 2009, Ap.J., 691, 1787 and Lagana et al. 2009, MNRAS,394, 357.

• Week 15:  The SZ Effect and Cluster Formation

  • Seminar topic:  Cluster masses, evolution, and dark energy

  • Starting point:  A good paper which integrates the material from the last three weeks of class is Umetsu et al. 2009, Ap.J., 694, 1643. Also, just for Gabe, there is Yuan et al. 2009, arXiv:0902.4294.