Wine and Cheese Fall 2017

This page records the schedule, titles and abstracts of the JHU/STScI CAS Astrophysics Wine & Cheese Series in Fall 2017.

Wine and Cheese sessions with one talk will have a 50 minute talk with 10 minutes for questions. Sessions with two speakers will have two 25 minute talks, each with 5 minutes for questions.

September 11th

Lauren Corlies (JHU)

Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies In Enzo (FOGGIE): Connecting Simulations and Observations

The circumgalactic medium (CGM) is host to a number of fundamental processes driving galaxy formation and evolution: gas accretion from the IGM, gas stripping from in-falling satellites, the ejection of gas by multiple feedback processes, and the recycling of gas by the disk. Yet its diffuse nature makes observations difficult and thus, the CGM is one of the least constrained aspects of hydrodynamical simulations. In this talk, I’ll discuss two ways we are trying to connect the simulated CGM to current and future observations. First, I’ll present observationally constrained emission predictions from a high-resolution cosmological simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy and demonstrate how this emission reflects the evolution of the CGM at late times and discuss the detection likelihoods for such emission. Second, I’ll present a novel implementation of a mesh refinement scheme wherein we achieve unprecedentedly high resolution in the CGM of a MW-like galaxy. I’ll highlight some preliminary results from these tests that indicate that resolution alone has a large impact on the physical structure and observational properties of this gas.

Ivan Padilla (JHU)

SPIDER: Searching for the echoes of inflation from atop the atmosphere

Balloon-borne platforms have long served as a shortcut to space-quality science and as pathfinder instruments for satellite missions. NASA's Long Duration Balloon platform allows for flights lasting roughly 20 days, carrying payloads weighing upwards of 6000 lbs. Spider is a balloon-borne microwave polarimeter that aims to take advantage of this platform to obtain very high sensitivity maps of the polarized cosmic microwave background, over a 10% patch of the sky and at 3 different frequencies -- 95, 150, and 285 GHz. The spatial and frequency coverage should allow for effective separation of foregrounds from the signal, potentially reaching an upper limit of r < 0.03.

Designed as a two-flight mission, Spider completed its first flight in January of 2015 after a 16 day voyage, suspended 36 km over the Antarctic continent. During the first flight, Spider observed a high Galactic latitude patch of the sky with over 2,000 polarization sensitive bolometers at 95 and 150 GHz. The second flight will replace some of the receivers with three high frequency 285 GHz channels containing 512 channels each. I will go over some preliminary results from the first flight, discuss some of the challenges involved, and motivate the need for a second flight. I will also give an update on the status of preparation for the second flight, which is scheduled for the end of 2018.

September 18th

David Neufeld (JHU)

What the Largest Atoms in the Galaxy Tell Us About the Density of Cosmic Rays

I'll discuss how the cosmic-ray ionization rate in diffuse molecular clouds can be inferred from observations of radio recombination lines emitted by atoms in high-lying "Rydberg" states. Our preliminary results are in good agreement with those obtained from observations of molecular ions such as OH+ and H3+.

Richard Conn Henry (JHU)

The Mental Universe
Forty-nine years ago I was hired (a PhD astronomer) by the JHU Physics department. I’d never understood physics from the classes I’d taken: physics did not seem to make much sense, especially, of course, quantum mechanics. So I decided I should teach physics myself, in the hope of understanding it at last. So, for about 35 years I taught Special Relativity, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics. The result was fascinating, and disturbing: it was clear that the universe is not what we astronomers think it is. I also discovered, by reading Nature and Science every week for all those years, that this was not a secret! For example, in Science, 1995, 270, 1439, “Measurements are the Only Reality, Say Quantum Tests.” But, the scientific community did not teach that fact to the young! What was going on? I decided, twelve years ago, to put the matter to the test: my wife and I were skiing in Colorado and in the evenings, I composed an essay entitled “The mental Universe,” and submitted it to Nature. Shortly after we returned to Baltimore, I received a phone call from England and was told that my essay “needed to be shortened by about a factor of two” before it could appear. I swallowed hard, shortened it, and it duly appeared (436, 29, 2005). I waited for blowback, but that never came. I will try to explain why this is not a joke, but is, well, real.

September 25th

Michael Crosley (JHU)

The Search for Transient Mass Loss in Active Stars
One factor important to habitability is the impact of stellar eruptive events on nearby exoplanets. Currently this is poorly constrained due to heavy reliance on solar scaling relationships and a lack of experimental evidence. Low frequency dynamic spectra of radio bursts from nearby stars offer the best chance to directly detect the stellar signature of transient mass loss on low mass stars. By using solar observations, analogous to those found in stellar studies, we test the validity and accuracy of the multi-wavelength analysis proposed to describe coronal mass ejections from radio bursts and flare observations. We take these results and apply them to 15 hours of radio observations of YZ CMi taken at Low Frequency Array and 20 hr simultaneously observed EQ Peg observations taken at the Jansky Very Large Array and Apache Point Observatory.

Matt Morris (JHU)

Stellar Atmospheric Modelling for the ACCESS Program
The goal of the ACCESS program (Absolute Color Calibration Experiment for Standard Stars) is to enable greater discrimination between theoretical astrophysical models and observations, where the comparison is limited by systematic errors associated with the relative flux calibration of the targets. To achieve these goals, ACCESS has been designed as a sub-orbital rocket borne payload and ground calibration program, to establish absolute flux calibration of stellar targets at <1% precision, with a resolving power of 500 across the 0.35 to 1.7 micron bandpass. Using calibrated high resolution spectra from Apache Point Observatory in addition to HST/CALSPEC data, I have developed stellar atmosphere models for ACCESS flight candidates, as well as a selection of A and G stars from the CALSPEC database using ATLAS9 and ATLAS12 Kurucz stellar atmosphere code. I will discuss the process of model fitting, and present preliminary results.

Raymond Simons (JHU)

z~2: An Epoch of Disk Assembly
At z = 0, the majority of massive star-forming galaxies contain thin, rotationally supported gas disks. It was once accepted that galaxies form thin disks early: collisional gas with high velocity dispersion should dissipate energy, conserve angular momentum, and develop rotational support in only a few galaxy crossing times (~few hundred Myr). However, this picture is not borne out at high redshift, where the processes governing galaxy assembly tend to be violent and inhospitable to disk formation. I will present results from our survey of star-forming galaxy kinematics at z ~ 2. I will show that this period is one of disk assembly, where galaxies are most rapidly building their stellar mass and only just beginning to develop the kinematic characteristics of local disks, i.e., low velocity dispersion and high rotation velocity.

Kirill Tchernyshyov (JHU)

Gas Dynamics in the Spiral Arms of the Milky Way
There is general agreement that the ISM of the Milky Way is arranged into a spiral-like structure of some sort, though there is not yet agreement on how regular this spiral-like structure is, how many arms it consists of, or how it evolves. In order to investigate the dynamics of gas associated with one of the spiral arms nearest to the Sun, the Perseus arm, we have developed techniques for inferring the line-of-sight component of the velocity field of the ISM using combinations of observations of dust reddening, gas emission, and gas absorption. Using these techniques, we have produced two maps of the line-of-sight velocity as a function of three dimensional position. In both of these maps, there are spatially coherent deviations from flat rotation which reach their peak amplitudes at approximately the location of the Perseus arm. We have compared these deviations to predictions from stationary spiral shock and dynamic spiral structure models and have found that both models predict features that are clearly not present in the observed velocity field.

October 2nd

Norman Murray (CITA)

Star Formation, GMCs, and Galaxies

Star formation on galactic scales is observed to be a slow process, a result known as the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation. I will argue, using observations, simulations, and analytic theory, that star formation on smaller scales, those of Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs), that the star formation rate increases with GMC age. GMCs in the "five kiloparsec ring" of the Milky Way are contracting under self-gravity, a process that is halted and reversed by feedback from star clusters. I will then describe the results of the FIRE simulations, which show that in galaxies with higher gas surface density, and hence more massive GMCs, the feedback not only disrupts the GMCs, it drives winds from the simulated galaxies; at high redshifts, the simulated winds remove the interstellar medium of the galaxy, halting star formation for a dynamical time. Upcoming CO intensity mapping experiments will test this prediction of the FIRE simulations.

October 9th

TBD (TBD)

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October 16th

TBD (TBD)

Observing Protoplanetary and Debris Disks with JWST
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October 23rd

TBD (TBD)

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October 30th

TBD (TBD)

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November 6th

TBD (TBD)

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November 13th

TBD (TBD)

Planning Solar System Observations with JWST
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November 27th

TBD (TBD)

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December 5th

TBD (TBD)

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