Spring 2015

12:40 - 1:30 PM every Thursday, location = 131 A & B Campbell Hall.

    • To volunteer for a 12 minute talk + 4 minutes for questions, send email to Paul Kalas (kalas@berkeley.edu) and Al Glassgold (aglassgold@berkeley.edu).

  • This forum is mainly for local scientists of any level to present their work to a broad spectrum of the department, and usually includes one short talk by the astronomy colloquium speaker of the day.

  • Subjects can include personal scientific research, reporting on other work appearing in journals, education and public outreach efforts, science policy, and professional development issues.

  • It is preferred if speakers bring their own laptop, cable adapter, and pointer. Presentations may also use the whiteboard.

Bold means confirmed

January 22:

    • Rodrigo Fernandez (UC Berkeley) - "Disk winds from neutron star merger remnants: electromagnetic transients and r-process nucleosynthesis"

    • Tiffany Meshkat (Leiden) - "Searching for Planets in Holey Debris Disks"

    • Scott Ransom (NRAO; visiting Miller Professor; colloq. speaker) - "Surprising Non-Pulsar Science from Globular Cluster Pulsars"

January 29:

    • Lauren Weiss (UC Berkeley) - “Are the Kepler-11 Planets Ultra-Low Density? Constraining the Kepler-11 Planet Masses with Radial Velocities”

    • Koutarou Kyutoku (U. Wisconsin-Milwaukee, host Kazumi Kashiyama): "Dynamical mass ejection from black hole-neutron star binaries".

    • Robert Feldmann (UC Berkeley) - "Dust and metals in galaxies - An equilibrium view on galaxy formation"

February 5:

    • Melissa Graham (UC Berkeley) - "Constraining the Progenitor Companion of the Nearby Type Ia SN\,2011fe with a Kiloday Nebular Spectrum"

    • Jason Wang (UC Berkeley) - "Probing the AU Microscopii Debris Disk at Close Separations with the Gemini Planet Imager"

  • Volunteer Needed

February 12: [cancelled due to conflict with Campbell Hall dedication ceremony]

February 19:

    • Dick Plambeck (UC Berkeley): "Probing the Parsec-scale Accretion Flow of 3C 84 with Millimeter Wavelength Polarimetry"

  • Sasha Tchekhovskoy (UC Berkeley) - "What makes astrophysical jets dance and why should we care?"

  • Alexander Kaurov (U. Chicago) - "Analytical models of reionization in the service of numerical simulations"

February 26:

    • Sanch Borthakur (UC Berkeley) - "Small-scale Properties of Atomic Gas in Extended Disks of Galaxies"

    • Isaac Shivvers (UC Berkeley) - "The CSM Around Core-Collapse SNe"

    • Tim Davis (Hertfordshire; hosted by Freeke) - "Monsters in the dark: Supermassive black hole mass measurements with molecular gas kinematics"

March 5:

    • Pat Kelly (UC Berkeley) - "A Population of Super-Standardizable Type Ia Supernovae"

    • Steve Croft (UC Berkeley) - "Surveys with the Murchison Widefield Array"

    • Ken Shen (UC Berkeley) - "The Fate of Double White Dwarf Binaries"

March 12:

    • Dick McCray (UC Berkeley) - "SN1987A environmental impact."

    • Mike McCourt (Harvard) "Going with the flow: using gas clouds to probe the accretion flow feeding Sgr A∗"

    • Ryan Trainor (UC Berkeley) "The Escape of Gas and Photons from Faint Galaxies"

March 19:

    • Eliot Quataert (UC Berkeley) "The Origin of Magnetic Fields in the First Galaxies"

    • Blake Sherwin (UC Berkeley) "New Results from Planck: A Brief Review"

    • Emily Rauscher (colloq speaker) "What I'm Learning About Diversity & Inclusion"

March 26 - Spring Break

April 2:

    • Kazumi Kashiyama (UC Berkeley) "Supermassive star formation via high-velocity collisions of protogalaxies"

    • Daniel Lecoanet (UC Berkeley) "Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability: A Code Comparison"

    • Dimitrios Psaltis (Arizona; colloq. speaker) “Linking Tests of Gravity On All Scales: from the Strong-Field Regime to Cosmology”

April 9:

    • Bekki Dawson (UC Berkeley) "A recipe for rocky super-Earths"

    • Athena Stacy (UC Berkeley): “The Impact of Minihalo Environments On the Growth of Pop III Clusters.”

    • Nathan Smith (U. Arizona, colloq speaker): "PTF11iqb: Bridging Type IIn with normal supernovae"

April 16:

    • Mate Adamkovics (UC Berkeley) "The transition between atomic and molecular gas in protoplanetary disks."

    • Rob De Rosa (UC Berkeley) “Near-IR Characterization of Young Substellar Companions in Upper Scorpius”

    • Daniel Marrone (U. Arizona; colloq. speaker) “Expanding the Event Horizon Telescope”

April 23:

    • Freeke van de Voort (UC Berkeley) "A persistent misaligned gas disc in an early-type galaxy"

    • Josiah Schwab (UC Berkeley) "The Evolution of White Dwarfs towards Accretion-Induced Collapse"

    • Paul Goldsmith (JPL; colloq. speaker) "Thermal Pressure in the Diffuse Interstellar Medium"

April 30:

    • Dyas Utomo (UC Berkeley) "EDGE: a CARMA Extragalactic Legacy Survey"

    • Davide Martizzi (UC Berkeley) “Is the formation of galaxy clusters in cosmological simulations a solved problem?"

    • Ruth Murray-Clay (UCSB; colloq. speaker) "A unified procedure for calculating thermal atmospheric escape."