Joint IAS Princeton University Astrophysics Colloquium

I will present an overview of efforts across the electromagnetic spectrum to identify and study tidal disruption flares (TDFs), when a star wanders too close to a super-massive black hole and is torn apart by tidal forces. In particular I will focus...

Dark matter constitutes more than 5/6 of the matter in the universe, but its nature and interactions remain one of the great puzzles of fundamental physics. Dark matter collisions or decays, occurring throughout the universe's past, have the...

The Cassini mission to Saturn continues to transform our understanding of this beautiful ringed planet and its entourage of moons. I'll provide an insider's view of the Cassini mission as the team leader of the Radio Science Team, and highlight some...

Black holes come in at least two varieties. Supermassive black holes lay at the centers of galaxies and, while not theoretically predicted, have been definitively proven to exist using observations of stars' orbits at the heart of the Milky Way...

Tracing matter and chemical elements in the Universe is critical for understanding the formation of the first galaxies, the formation and growth of supermassive black holes, and ultimately the evolution of galaxies like our Milky Way. Throughout the...

DATE & TIME CHANGED! The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) was the first mission to explore the global heliosphere and in concert with Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 is discovering a fundamentally new and uncharted physical domain of the outer...

In recent years, the number of known galaxy clusters has grown dramatically, thanks in large part to the success of surveys utilizing the Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect. In particular, surveys like the South Pole Telescope 2500 deg^2 survey have...

The accuracy in the direct measurement of distances to galaxies has continued to improve dramatically over the past decade. Local measurements of the Hubble constant based on Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescope observations of astrophysical standard...

In the Solar system, the planets follow orbits that are aligned with the Sun's equatorial plane to within about 7 degrees. But what about planets around other stars? Many techniques are now available to measure the obliquities of planet-hosting...

Building a comprehensive picture for the evolution of galaxies from early times through present epoch requires understanding a huge dynamic range of physical processes. With observations ranging from detections of galaxies less than a billion years...