ASTR 400/500 – F19
ASTR 400/500: ASTRONOMY SEMINAR SERIES, FALL 2019
Instructor: Dr. Andrea Isella, HBH 354, x5491
Location: Meets in HBH 227, Wednesdays from 12:05 pm to 12:55 pm
Course Description: ASTR 400 (undergraduate) and ASTR 500 (graduate) are a 1-credit seminar class that meets every week at 12:05. The course may be repeated for credit. Junior and senior Astro-majors and all Astro-graduate students should sign up for this class each semester.
Speakers include experts from around the world who come to Rice to discuss their research. Rice faculty, graduate students and undergraduates also participate by giving talks, the graduate students every semester and the undergrads every other semester. Student talks do not necessarily need to be on their own research. Full-hour talks should be 45 minutes in length, and half-hour talks 20 minutes, with 5 minutes for questions. We must vacate the room before 1 pm, so please be on time. It is up to the speakers to ensure that their talks display properly, so please check your presentation ahead of time. Abstracts should be provided to the instructor no later than Friday morning before the talk so notices can be distributed.
Overall Course Objectives and Expected Learning Outcomes: The goal of this course is to give students experience in giving and evaluating oral presentations on current astronomical research. By the end of the course, students will be able to evaluate whether a talk is clearly organized and accessible. Graduate students will gain experience in giving an oral presentation and over the course of the full year, undergraduate students will gain this same experience. Students will be exposed to a range of current astronomical research topics and gain an appreciation for the research being done in the department.
Grading: Pass/fail. At least 80% attendance is required to pass, and students must present a talk as described above.
Feedback: Students who work with a faculty member should get feedback on their talks from their advisers. The instructor will be available to provide feedback to all other students and answer any questions about the seminar immediately after the talks.
Disability Information:
Students with a documented disability that impacts their work in this class should contact me to discuss their needs. Disabled students should also register with the Disability Support Services Office in the Ley Student Center.
Schedule (click on the talk title to visualize the abstract)
DATE | SPEAKER(S) | TITLE | HOST |
Aug 28** | Andrea Isella | Organizational Meeting | |
Sep 4 | Matthew Baring (Rice) | Particle Acceleration and Radiative Cooling in Blazar Jets | |
Sep 11* | Roberta Paladini (IPAC/Caltech) |
Physical properties and star formation efficiency for Galactic High-mass star-forming regions |
Isella |
Sep 18 | Joe Llama (Lowell Observatory) |
The impact of stellar activity on detecting earth analog exoplanets |
Johns-Krull |
Sep 25** | Jason Ling/Erik Weaver | Research Updates | |
Oct 2 | Andrew Long |
Searching for new physics with X-rays from magnetic white dwarf stars |
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Oct 9* | Maxwell Hummel | ||
Oct 16 | Edison Liang |
Collision of two magnetized jets created by hollow ring lasers |
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Oct 23** | Kun Hu |
Magnetar-powered X-ray transient as the aftermath of a binary neutron-star merger. |
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Oct 30 | Asa Stahl Laura Flagg |
Detecting Young Hot Jupiters Circumstellar Molecular Hydrogen around TWA 7 |
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Nov 6* | Shuo Kong (Yale) | New Insights into the Stellar Initial Mass Function: the Interplay between Filaments, Magnetic Fields, and Protostellar Accretion | Isella |
Nov 13 | Hui Li (LANL) | New Advances in Understanding Dust-Gas Interactions in Protoplanetary Disks | |
Nov 20** | Julian Garrido
Linoy Kotler |
Journal Club: Interstellar 60Fe in Antarctica
Adapting Characteristic-Based Techniques to a Cosmological Sample of Supernovae using Machine Learning. |
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Nov 27 | Ted Grosson Omar Garcia | Journal club: LSST Science Goals and Commissioning
TBD |
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Dec 4 | Hongyi Zhang Jackson White |
Large-Misalignment Mechanism of Fuzzy Dark Matter MHD Simulation Results of Colliding Magnetized Plasma Jets |