Joint IAS Princeton University Astrophysics Colloquium

Recent Spitzer observations have revealed presence of near-IR excesses in spectra of more than thirty white dwarfs with atmospheres enriched in metals. These excesses are naturally interpreted as reprocessing of the stellar emission by compact...

The increasing role of general relativity in the dynamics of stellar systems with central massive black holes, in the generation of extreme mass-ratio inspirals, and in the evolution of hierarchical triple systems inspires a close examination of how...

Planetesimals are the building blocks of planets. They can be traced by the dust they produce in collisions or sublimation that forms a debris disk. In the solar system, such a dust disk is produced by the asteroids, comets and Kuiper Belt objects...

We know that most stars, if not all, were once surrounded by protoplanetary disks. How these young disks evolve into planetary systems is a fundamental question in astronomy. Observations of T Tauri stars (TTS) may provide insights into this...

The NASA Kepler Mission has demonstrated that planets with radii larger than Earth yet smaller than Neptune are common around Sun-like stars. Although Kepler has determined the physical sizes of hundreds of such planets, we know virtually nothing...

Hydrogen recombination at redshifts z ~ 1100 - 1500 leads to the rapid decrease of the optical depth of the Universe due to Thomson scattering. As a result CMB photons previously strongly coupled with baryonic matter become free and able to reach...

Galaxies mark the nexus between the "micro" scales of individual stars and black holes, and the "macro" scales of the "cosmic web", the large scale structure in which galaxies are embedded. Modeling the physics of galaxy formation is therefore one...