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.