Wine and Cheese Fall 2022

This page records the schedule, titles and abstracts of the JHU/STScI CAS Astrophysics Wine & Cheese Series in Fall 2022.

Wine and Cheese sessions with one speaker 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. Sessions in the Graduate Student Series will have three 15 minute talks, each with 5 minutes for questions.

12 September

Ann Hornschemeier Cardif (GSFC/JHU)

The Proposed STAR-X MIDEX Mission
STAR-X is a MIDEX proposed to NASA in December 2021, that was recently (August 2022) selected for competitive Phase A study. Comprising an X-ray Telescope (XRT) provided by GSFC and MIT, a UV Telescope (UVT) provided by the University of Colorado, and a spacecraft provided by Ball Aerospace, STAR-X is designed to conduct time-domain sruvesy and to respond rapidly to transient events discovered by other observatories such as LIGO, Rubin/LSST, Roman/WFIRST, and SKA. STAR-X is a timely response to Astro2020’s recommendation for a space-based, sustaining time-domain and multi-messenger program. This talk will cover the mission and science case.

19 September

Carrie Filion (JHU)

Galactic Archaeology with the Subaru Prime Focus Spectrograph
The Subaru Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) will soon embark on an ambitious, multi-year survey that will investigate the nature of dark matter and study the formation and evolution of structure on a range of astrophysical scales. In this talk, I will provide a brief overview of the planned observations of individual, faint stars in the Local Group. I will detail the science motivating these observations and discuss the insight that we hope to gain.

Justin Otter (JHU)

Resolved Molecular Gas Observations of MaNGA Post-starbursts Reveal a Tumultuous Past
Post-starburst galaxies (PSBs) have recently and rapidly quenched their star-formation, thus they are an important way to understand how galaxies transition from star-forming late-types to quiescent early-types. The recent discovery of large cold gas reservoirs in PSBs calls into question the theory that galaxies must lose their gas to become quiescent. Optical Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) surveys have revealed two classes of PSBs: central PSBs with central quenching regions and ring PSBs with quenching in their outskirts. We analyze a sample of 13 nearby ($z < 0.1$) PSBs with spatially resolved optical IFS data from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey and with matched resolution Atacama Large (sub-)Millimeter Array (ALMA) observations of $^{12}$CO(1-0). Disturbed stellar kinematics in 7/13 of our PSBs and centrally concentrated molecular gas is consistent with a recent merger for the majority of our sample. In galaxies without merger evidence, alternate processes may funnel gas inwards and suppress star-formation, including outflows, stellar bars, and minor mergers or interactions. The star-formation efficiencies of the post-starburst regions in nearly half our galaxies are suppressed while the gas fractions are consistent with star-forming galaxies. AGN feedback may drive this stabilization, and we observe AGN-consistent emission in the centers of 5/13 galaxies. Finally, our central and ring PSBs have similar properties except the ionized and molecular gas in central PSBs is more disturbed. Overall, the molecular gas in our PSBs tends to be compact and highly disturbed, resulting in concentrated gas reservoirs unable to form stars efficiently.

26 September

Thomas Essinger-Hileman (GSFC)

EXCLAIM: The EXperiment for Cryogenic Large-Aperture Intensity Mapping
The EXperiment for Cryogenic Large-Aperture Intensity Mapping (EXCLAIM) will constrain star formation over cosmic time by carrying out a blind and complete census of redshifted carbon monoxide (CO) and ionized carbon ([CII]) emission in cross-correlation with galaxy survey data in redshift windows from the present to z=3.5 with a fully cryogenic, balloon-borne telescope. EXCLAIM will carry out extragalactic and Galactic surveys in a conventional balloon flight planned for 2023. EXCLAIM will be the first instrument to deploy µ-Spec silicon integrated spectrometers with a spectral resolving power R=512 covering 420-540 GHz. I will summarize the design, science goals, and status of EXCLAIM.

3 October

Namrata Roy (JHU)

Star Formation Suppression and Feedback in Nearby "Red Geyser" Galaxies
A key question in galaxy evolution is understanding how galaxies completely stop (or “quench”) their star formation towards the end of their lifetime. In spite of having the fuel necessary for forming stars, the lack of detected star formation in old massive galaxies indicates the presence of a feedback energy. Active galactic nuclei (AGN) driven feedback has been proposed to be the most efficient feedback mechanism capable of suppressing star formation - but direct evidence of such feedback in typical galaxies has been lacking. In this talk, I will present evidence from a series of papers that a new class of early-type galaxies, known as ‘red geysers’, may represent AGN feedback in action. I will show that these low redshift galaxies host low luminosity radio mode AGNs with signatures of large scale ionized gas outflows and suppressed star formation activities. These galaxies also frequently show signatures of inflowing cool neutral gas, possibly fueling the central AGN. I will present a multi-wavelength study of these red geyser population from a variety of observational datasets and discuss their role in the global quenching of star formation.

10 October

Yuan-Sen Ting (ANU)

Reconstructing Galaxy Merger History with Graph Neural Networks