Astrophysics Seminars

Massive stars remain a centerpiece of astrophysical research, enriching their galactic environments throughout their dynamic lives and often-explosive ends, and leaving behind compact objects as remnants. The past decade has yielded great progress...

Classical stellar dynamics was largely concerned with equilibrium configurations of galaxies and star clusters. We are now able to resolve fine details and need to be able to model fluctuations around equilibria - moreover, it's long been recognised...

Pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments aim to detect nHz-frequency gravitational waves using high-precision timing of millisecond pulsars. Multiple PTA collaborations have recently reported evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background...

The common observation that Jupiter's Galilean moons resemble a miniature Solar System has long been seen as evidence that young giant planets are surrounded by circumplanetary disks of gas and dust. Recently, one circumplanetary disk - around the...

A large fraction of exoplanetary systems contain planets that orbit very close to their host stars. With orbital periods in the range of days to weeks, tidal forces become important and lead to significant orbital and physical effects on the planets...

The search for signs of life beyond Earth is a key motivator in exoplanet research.  A suitable “biosignature gas” is one that: can accumulate in an atmosphere against atmospheric radicals and other sinks; has strong atmospheric spectral features...

Pulsars are highly magnetized rotating neutron stars known for their periodic bursts of radio emission. Decades of astronomical observations revealed that pulsars produce non-thermal radiation in all energy bands, from radio to gamma rays, covering...

Galaxies are at the core of nearly all modern astrophysical studies. They serve as essential cosmological probes, tracing the structure of the universe, while also providing the stage on which stars form and black holes grow. Despite their...

From the collapse of molecular clouds into stars to spectacular galactic mergers, binary systems form on many scales across the universe. Interactions between binaries and their environments can sculpt the stellar populations we observe today, alter...

The life cycles of star clusters are an integral part of the formation of galaxies and their black hole populations.   In these dense stellar environments, stars and black holes participate in complicated dynamical interactions that can create many...