Hello all,

I regret to inform you that I failed to find a host this week for the colloquium speaker (Gunther Hassinger), not because of lack of volunteers, but through my own faults.

I apologize for the inconvenience, this will not happen again.

Rodolfo.

Hello everyone,

This week our colloquium speaker will be James Bullock. He will be talking about dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way and “massive failures”. He suggested the following paper for discussion this Monday:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012MNRAS.422.1203B

See you then,
Valentino.-

Hi Everyone,

This week’s colloquium speaker is Vicky Meadows from UW. She’s an expert on detecting planet habitability. I’ll be talking about a paper by her student Tyler Robinson on detecting exo-oceans http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3864. If we have time we can also talk about a proceedings she wrote with Rory Barnes on habitability around M stars http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.1883.

-Eric

Hi Everyone,

This week’s colloquium and COSMOCLUB speaker is Lia Athanassoula. She is an expert on bars, in particular, simulations of bars. She’ll be talking about secular evolution of bars in COSMOCLUB and how to get spiral structure at colloquium. She recommended these papers to go over:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005MNRAS.358.1477A

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?2003MNRAS.341.1179A&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf

I think I’ll go over the latter, ‘What determines the strength and slow down of bars?’

-Edmond

Hello all,

This week’s colloquium speaker will be Caroline Terquem, she will talk about planetary migration and protoplanetary disks. I will be discussing the following papers on Monday,

Eccentricity pumping of a planet on an inclined orbit by a disc
Terquem, Caroline; Ajmia, Aikel
2010MNRAS.404..409T

http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0657

Migration and the Formation of Systems of Hot Super-Earths and Neptunes
Terquem, Caroline; Papaloizou, John C. B.
2007ApJ…654.1110T

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609779

Rodolfo.

Desika suggests that we discuss the following papers:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.20536.x/abstract

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010MNRAS.401.1613N

I’ll be focusing on the first paper but may get to the second if we have time.

In preparation for Martin Bureau’s colloquium, we will be discussing the following papers dealing with molecular gas in early-type galaxies. Both papers discuss results from the SAURON and ATLAS3D surveys.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011MNRAS.417..882D

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011MNRAS.410.1197C

–Jerome

In preparation for Tony Piro’s colloquium, we’ll talk briefly about two topics (both are short!):

Supernovae 2011fe lightcurve and implications for radioactive isotopes: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012arXiv1201.5398P

Tidal heating/synchronization in a double white dwarf binary: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011ApJ…740L..53P

–Morgan

In preparation for James Peebles’ colloquium “The Curious Behavior of Galaxies as Island Universes”, we will look at this paper http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010Natur.465..565P that offers an original perspective on galaxy evolution. The article is short, so we will have time for discussion. Please, take a look at the introduction and the “Prospects” section.

Here’s his email about the papers posted:

My official talk is a summary of results from Herschel.  So naturally this
is much broader than my own work, which is focused on molecular clouds and
star formation, primarily in the Milky Way. I use radio, mm, submm, and IR
observations to try to study the origin and evolution of molecular clouds,
and how their structure controls the rate of star formation and other key
processes.

The papers I'm attaching are something of a "grab bag" including Herchel
and non-Herschel results.

1) http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ...715.1370G
2) http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ApJ...680..428G
3) http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ...724.1402K
4) http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010A%26A...521L..17L

The speaker this week is Chung-Pei Ma from UC Berkeley. She’s recommended the following paper:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v480/n7376/full/nature10636.html

with supplementary information here:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v480/n7376/extref/nature10636-s1.pdf

On Tuesday, I will discuss

http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/1111.0347

Neil

Hi all,

This time, I will be discussing Roger’s papers on observations of gamma ray pulsars,

http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.5762

http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3074

In preparation for Guenther Hasinger’s colloquium this week, we will discuss the following two papers about x-ray observations of (1) the clustering of AGN at z<4 and (2) faint AGN at z<8:

(1) Allevato, …, Hasinger  et al., 2011, ApJ 736, 99

(2) Cowie, Barger & Hasinger, 2011, arXiv1110.3326

Hi all,

This week’s colloquium speaker is Kaitlin Kratter. She will be talking about

star and planet formation. On Wednesday at 10:45 am I will be discussing

the following paper she recommended:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ…708.1585K

Thanks,

Anna

Hi, all-
To prepare for Tristan Guillot’s talk this week, we will examine a recent paper of his during Monday morning coffee:
“An analysis of the CoRoT-2 system: a young spotted star and its inflated giant planet”

This week’s colloquium speaker is Paul Schechter, who will be discussing WFIRST.

On Tuesday I’ll be discussing the following paper he recommended for background:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.2291

Fundamentalist physics: why Dark Energy is bad for Astronomy by Simon D.M. White (2007).

To prepare for Olivier Doré’s colloquium Wednesday, I will be discussing

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0507298 for a review of Dusty IR Galaxies as a source of the Cosmic IR Background, and

http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.2028 for the early results on this subject from Planck.

Hi all,

On Monday we’ll be discussing papers for Elizabeth Blanton’s colloquium.  She recommended the following two:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010PNAS..107.7174B Blanton et al. 2010 “Active galactic nucleus feedback in clusters of galaxies”

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011AJ….141…88W

Wing & Blanton 2011 “Galaxy Cluster Environments of Radio Sources”

Supermassive Black Hole Formation Via Gas Accretion In Nuclear Stellar Clusters

Hi all, Andrea Ghez will be this week’s colloquium speaker. She has suggested the following three papers, which I will summarize at coffee.

Ghez et al. 2008 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ApJ…689.1044G
Lu et al. 2009 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009ApJ…690.1463L
Do et al. 2009 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009ApJ…703.1323D

See you there!

Srikar will lead a discussion on the following papers for Adrienne Cool’s colloquium:

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0201166

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ…719..915C

and if there’s time,

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009ApJ…699…40S

In preparation for Elena D’Onghia’s colloquium this Wednesday, we will discuss the following 2 papers at Monday’s coffee discussion:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7364/full/nature10417.html

http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/688/1/254/pdf/72817.web.pdf

To prepare for Stephan Rosswog’s colloquium on Wednesday, October 26th, we will be discussing an overview of the physics of compact binary mergers and their products:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.0912

See you Monday.

In preparation for Ned Wright’s colloquium we will be discussing some early results from the WISE satellite:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.0031

If we have time, we will also discuss WISE results on NEOs and brown dwarfs:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.6400
http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.4678

See you on Monday!

Hi all,

We’ll be discussing the following paper on Monday about the merger of double white dwarf binaries to prepare for Ken Shen’s colloquium:  http://voxcharta.org/?s=1108.4036

For some background on the single-degenerate Ia supernova channel Ken referred us to the following: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1982ApJ…253..798N

See you there,

Morgan

In preparation for Ryan Foley’s colloquium, we will be covering one of his latest papers:

Velocity Evolution and the Intrinsic Color of Type Ia Supernovae

A heavily related paper (also by Ryan) that we’ll cover in less detail:

Measuring Ejecta Velocity Improves Type Ia Supernova Distances

In preparation for Jason Tumlinson’s colloquium this Wednesday, we’ll be discussing the following paper:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/1103.5252

Those looking for extra credit may also read this one:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/1108.3852

Tomorrow at coffee we will discuss the following two very short letters that Richard Ellis suggested to prepare for his colloquium this Wednesday.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ApJ…677L…5V
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ…717L.103N

At coffee on Tuesday we will be briefly discussing the following three papers:

The main paper describing the The High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010MNRAS.409..619K

A paper describing the discovery of a radio Magnetar:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ…721L..33L

A paper describing the discovery of 5 MSPs:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011arXiv1101.4778B

At coffee on Monday I’ll be leading the discussion of Meredith Hughes’s paper:

“A Spatially Resolved Inner Hole in the Disk Around GM Aurigae”
Hughes et al. (2009)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009ApJ…698..131H

To prepare for Lars’ colloquium, he recommended that we re-familiarize
ourselves with some of the spiral disk papers from the archive.

We shall focus on Toomre’s 1981 conference proceeding
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981seng.proc..111T

We will talk about it at coffee tomorrow.

Thanks,
Mark

In preparation for Chris Martin’s colloquium, we will discuss the following pair of SPIE papers describing a couple of instruments designed by Chris’ team. (Since I didn’t receive a list of papers from Chris, I hope these will be relevant to his talk!)

FIREBall (Balloon-borne UV spectrograph): http://www.srl.caltech.edu/sal/fireball-spie.pdf

Keck Cosmic Web Imager (Wide-field optical IFU):  http://www.srl.caltech.edu/sal/spie_paper_number_7735_22_f.pdf

Giuseppe Gavazzi (Milano-Bicocca) will present his latest work on galaxy evolution in the Coma supercluster http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010A%26A…517A..73G

At coffee on Monday I’ll be leading the discussion of Joan Najita’s paper:

“Organic Molecules and Water in the Planet Formation Region of Young Circumstellar Disks”
Carr and Najita (2008)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008Sci…319.1504C

I will discuss the recent paper “The Structure and Metallicity Gradient in the Extreme Outer Disk of NGC 7793″ by M. Vlajic, J. Bland-Hawthorne, and K.C. Freeman: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1101.0607v1

I will also attempt to provide some context for this result, as it is one of an increasing number that shows flat abundance gradients in the far outskirts of galaxies.

I will also look at: http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-4357/684/2/L79/pdf/592231.pdf  as it is cited in the Vlajic paper as explaining the result.

At Journal Club we will discuss the following paper by Nestor et al.:

“Narrowband Imaging of Escaping Lyman-Continuum Emission in the SSA22 Field” (http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.0286)

See you there,

Gabor

In preparation for Frank Shu’s colloquium “Climate Change and Energy Solutions”, we will be discussing his paper “Global Change and the Energy Crisis”, which can be found here in PDF format:

http://www.physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/phys239/shu_energy.pdf

We will be discussing two papers that Christian and collaborators have recently written about forming stellar mass black holes in core-collapse supernovae.  We will probably focus more on the first, which focuses on the relationship between the ZAMS mass of a star and the nature of the final remnant (for massive stars).

-Luke

Black Hole Formation in Failing Core-Collapse Supernovae

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010arXiv1010.5550O

Dynamics and Gravitational Wave Signature of Collapsar Formation

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010arXiv1012.1853O

In preparation for Phil Pinto’s Colloquium on Wednesday, we will be discussing the following paper:

http://lsst.org/files/docs/overview_v1.0.pdf

and the LSST website http://www.lsst.org/

Let’s talk about:

“Understanding current causes of women’s underrepresentation in science,” Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.1014871108

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/02/02/1014871108

(you can also check out the Wired article: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/gender-discrimination-science)

I don’t expect to exhaust this topic, but if we really want to talk science let’s discuss the recent paper:

Bennert et al. 2011, “The Relation between Black Hole Mass and Host Spheroid Stellar Mass out to z~2,” arXiv:1102.1975

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011arXiv1102.1975B

In preparation for Shri Kulkarni’s colloquium on Wednesday, we’ll be discussing some combination of these two papers on the Palomar Transient Factory:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009PASP..121.1334R

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009PASP..121.1395L



In preparation for Dusan Keres’ Colloquium on Wednesday, we will be discussing the following paper:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009MNRAS.395..160K

In preparation for Matthew McQuinn’s FLASH on Friday, we will be discussing the following paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.1750

Phil hasn’t sent a paper yet or sent his faculty host a talk title, so Rosalie has picked one of his recent papers to present:

An explanation for the slopes of stellar cusps in galaxy spheroids

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011MNRAS.411L..61H

This Monday 01/24, in preparation for Wednesday’s colloquium by Brant Roberton, we will discuss the following paper:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ApJ…680.1083R

This week we also have a FLASH by Phil Hopkins and is my understanding that on Monday Rosalie will also lead a discussion on a paper by him.

In preparation of Charie Conroy’s Colloquium on Wednesday, we will be discussing the following paper:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.4934

In preparation of Kristian Finlator’s Colloquium on Wednesday, we will be discussing the following papers:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008MNRAS.385.2181F

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010MNRAS.408.2115M

We will be discussing the following papers at colloquium club:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009MNRAS.395..160K
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005MNRAS.363….2K

We will be focusing primarily on the 2009 paper but may refer to the 2005 one.

For colloquium club tomorrow we will be discussing the following paper by Philip, which discusses the implications modified gravity models would have on stellar structure:

“Stellar Structure and Tests of Modified Gravity”
http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.4107v1

To get ready for Aristotle’s talk he recommends we take a look at http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.0735, on thermal tides around hot Jupiters. He also recomends http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.2313 which expands on the fluid dynamics theory involved.

Rachel Mandelbaum has suggested the following papers for our colloquium paper discussion:
1) http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006MNRAS.368..715M – this shows how galaxy-galaxy lensing can be used to learn about the dark matter halos and large-scale environments of galaxies.

2) http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010PhRvD..81f3531B – this shows how galaxy-galaxy lensing and galaxy clustering can be used to constrain cosmology

Notice that the discussion will happen on Tuesday 11/09.

Hope to see you there,
Valentino.-

We will be looking at Brad Hansen’s latest paper, titled ‘Calibration of Equilibrium Tide Theory for Extrasolar Planets’: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ…723..285H

The 1998 paper by Eggleton et al. provides some useful background: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1998ApJ…499..853E

In preparation for Alyson Brooks’ colloquium on Wednesday I will be talking about the following paper:

Bulgeless dwarf galaxies and dark matter cores from supernova-driven outflows

Letter (PDF)

There is a fair amount of supplemental information attached as well, if you are interested in the details of their simulation.

Supplementary Information (PDF)

Movie (MOV)

Thanks,
Judy

On Tuesday, there will be a short discussion of

Smith & Owocki, 2006, ApJL, 645, L45

“On the Role of Continuum-driven Eruptions in the Evolution of Very Massive Stars and Population III Stars”

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006astro.ph..6174S

Stephanie Wachter says that this is “a good letter that touches on many aspects of [her] talk .”

Abstract for talk:

Shells, Bubbles and Rings: Eruptive Mass Loss on the Path to Supernovae

Massive stars play a key role in the chemical and mechanical evolution of the ISM in galaxies.  These luminous stars with their strong winds and mass outflows shape their local environment, which in turn has implications for the observed evolution of type II supernova events.  Despite their importance, our knowledge about the formation and evolution of massive stars is surprisingly limited. In particular, the post main sequence evolution of massive stars, when they shed most of their mass, is poorly understood. Observationally, this stage can be explored through the study of Wolf-Rayet stars (WRs), luminous blue variables (LBVs) and red supergiants.  We have recently discovered a large, obscured population of these rare evolved massive stars, which is characterized by prominent circumstellar shells in 24 micron observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Our IR spectroscopic follow-up of the central sources of these shells has revealed several new WRs, as well as a large number of candidate LBVs that  – if confirmed – would double the existing sample. I will discuss the properties of these shell sources in the context of massive star evolution. I will also present an overview of the status and scientific capabilities of the WISE mission and its potential for massive star research.

In preparation for Charlie Conroy’s colloquium we will discuss the following papers:

1.  A Substantial Population of Low Mass Stars in Luminous Elliptical Galaxies

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010arXiv1009.5992V

2.  Dust Attenuation in Disk-dominated Galaxies: Evidence for the 2175 Å Dust Feature

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ…718..184C

The next paper is background reading:

3.  The Propagation of Uncertainties in Stellar Population Synthesis Modeling. I. The Relevance of Uncertain Aspects of Stellar Evolution and the Initial Mass Function to the Derived Physical Properties of Galaxies

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009ApJ…699..486C

At Colloquium Journal Club on Monday (10:45am) we will discuss a  paper or two to prepare for Thayne Currie’s colloquium on Adaptive Optics  Imaging of Massive Planets and Low-Mass Brown Dwarfs:

Data:
Currie, T., et al., 2010, ApJ, 721, L177

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ…721L.177C

Theory:
Burrows, A., Sudarsky, D., Hubeny, I., 2006, ApJ, 650, 1140

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006ApJ…650.1140B

((FYI)
(He also sent this one but I’m doing similar stuff, so don’t worry about
it as I’d be happy to summarize it for you:)
Method:
Lafreniere, D., et al., 2007, ApJ, 660, 770
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007ApJ…660..770L )

This is a review article about planetary collisions.

The paper can be found here

Asphaug, E.
Similar-sized collisions and the diversity of planets
Chemie der Erde – Geochemistry
Volume 70, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 199-219

At coffee on Monday I’ll be leading the discussion of George Preston’s paper:

“Helium Lines in RR Lyrae Spectra,”
Preston (2009)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009A%26A…507.1621P

Dear All,

This week, we are going to be hosting our very own Greg Laughlin as the colloquium speaker.

He suggested the following paper as a good start for “An inside look at Extrasolar Planets“:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009ApJ…704L..49B

We’ll discuss this paper during the morning coffee on Monday.

-Bülent Kızıltan

Hi all!

To prepare for Jeremy Darling’s colloquium this week, we will be discussing the first paper below (and the second one if we have time) tomorrow at Colloquium Coffee.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ApJ…673..832M
“Formaldehyde Densitometry of Starburst Galaxies ”
Mangum, J. G., Darling, J., Menten, K. M., Henkel, C.  2008,
Astrophys. J., 673, 832

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007ApJ…669L…9D
“A Dense Gas Trigger for OH Megamasers ”
Darling, J.   2007, Astrophys. J., 669, L9

An extra paper is

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ…709..386Z
“Formaldehyde Anti-Inversion at z = 0.68 in the Gravitational Lens B0218+357 ”
Zeiger, B. & Darling, J.   2010, Astrophys. J., 709, 386

See you tomorrow!
~Rosalie

To prepare for Frank Bigiel’s Colloquium this week we will be discussing:

Bigiel et al 2008, AJ, 136, 2846

I will also mention/discuss some selected topics from:

Leroy et al 2008, AJ, 136, 2782

Cheers,
Robert

We will be discussing the following paper in preparation for Betsy Barton’s colloquium:

The WHIQII Survey: Metallicities and Spectroscopic Properties of Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies

http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/708/2/1076/

Andrew Blain has suggested that we discuss the following paper:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.3642

See you at coffee,

Valentino.-

In preparation for Jean Turner’s colloquium on Wednesday, we will be discussing the following papers:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1523

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ApJ…675..281M

To prepare for Gordon Ogilvie’s Colloquium, we will be going over the following paper:

Tidal dissipation in rotating fluid bodies: a simplified model

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009MNRAS.396..794O

To prepare for Stephane Udry’s talk on Wednesday, we will be discussing the following paper at coffee:

The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets
XIII. A planetary system with 3 super-Earths (4.2, 6.9, and 9.2 M⊕)

http://adsabs.harvard.edu.oca.ucsc.edu/abs/2009A%26A…493..639M

We’ll be talking about Jason Melbourne’s paper on stellar formation history in the irregular dwarf galaxy KKH 98.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.0592

In preparation for Ralf Klessen’s colloquium on Wednesday, we will be discussing the following two papers:

Jappsen et al. 2005 “The Stellar Mass Spectrum From Non-isothermal Gravoturbulent Fragmentation”

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005A&A…435..611J

Clark et al. 2008 “The First Stellar Cluster”

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ApJ…672..757C

In preparation for Loren Hoffman’s talk on Wednesday we’ll be discussing
the following paper:

“The Imprint of Dissipation on the Shapes of Merger Remnant LOSVDs” -
http://adsabs.harvard.edu.oca.ucsc.edu/abs/2009ApJ…705..920H

Tommaso Treu will be our colloquium speaker this week. He is from
UCSB and works primarily on gravitational lensing, galaxy evolution,
and black holes. I will be leading the journal club discussion of one
(possibly two) of his recent papers on Monday at coffee (10:45am).

We will discuss this paper:
Can Dry Merging Explain the Size Evolution of Early-Type Galaxies?
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009ApJ…706L..86N

and maybe this one:
The Distribution of Dark Matter Over Three Decades in Radius in the
Lensing Cluster Abell 611
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009ApJ…706.1078N

At coffee on Tuesday I’ll be leading the discussion of David Charbonneau’s recent paper detailing the discovery GJ 1214b, arguably the first “typical” transiting super-Earth (CoRoT-7b is special):

A super-Earth transiting a nearby low-mass star
Charbonneau et al. (2009)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009Natur.462..891C

There is also an interesting figure in Geoff Marcy’s accompanying News and Views article in the same issue of Nature:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009Natur.462..853M

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007Sci…316.1874M
http://adsabs.harvard.edu.oca.ucsc.edu/abs/2009ApJ…696L..89C

Peter Goldreich’s colloquium on Wednesday will will focus on the
origin of droplets formed in impacts. In preparation, we will be
discussing Shu et al. 2001 “Origin of Chondrules”
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0004-637X/548/2/1029

Thermometric Soots on Hot Jupiters?

K. Zahnle, M. S. Marley, J. J. Fortney

We use a 1D thermochemical and photochemical kinetics model to predict that the stratospheric chemistry of hot Jupiters should change dramatically as temperature drops from 1200 to 1000 K. At 1200 K methane is too unstable to reach the stratosphere in significant quantities, while thermal decomposition of water is a strong source of OH radicals that oxidize any hydrocarbons that do form to CO and CO$_2$. At 1000 K methane, although very reactive, survives long enough to reach the lower stratosphere, and the greater stability of water coupled with efficient scavenging of OH by H$_2$ raise the effective C/O ratio in the reacting gases above unity. Reduced products such as ethylene, acetylene, and hydrogen cyanide become abundant; such conditions favor polymerization and possible formation of PAHs and soots. Although low temperature is the most important factor favoring hydrocarbons in hot Jupiters, higher rates of vertical mixing and generally lower metallicities also favor organic synthesis. The peculiar properties of HD 189733b compared to other hot Jupiters–a broadband blue haze, no sign of Na or K, and hints that CO might be underabundant–can be explained by an organic haze if the planet is cool enough. Whether this interpretation applies to HD 189733b itself, many organic-rich warm Jupiters are sure to be discovered in the near future.

I have selected the following two white papers that I hope are relevant.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009astro2010S.195M
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009astro2010S.286S

Best,

Valentino.-

We will be talking about the paper:
The Distribution of Thermal Pressures in the Interstellar Medium from a Survey of C I Fine-Structure Excitation

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009PASP..121.1104J

Hi all,

I preparation for Mike Kuhlen’s colloquium we’ll go over the
following paper:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.0005

The main Science article is not too detailed, so Mike recommended
the arXiv version which also contains the Supplementary Online
Material.

Best,
Javiera

At coffee on Monday I’ll be leading the discussion of Anna Frebel’s paper:

“High-Resolution Spectroscopy of Extremely Metal-Poor Stars in the Least
Evolved Galaxies: Ursa Major II and Coma Berenices,”
Frebel et al. (2009)

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009arXiv0902.2395F

Please look at Sections 1, 4, and 5; also skim Section 3.

Marta Volonteri (University of Michigan) will be our speaker next week; she studies binary supermassive black holes.

She will be speaking about three short papers. We will focus on the two newer papers; I am including the third in this email mostly as background reading for you.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009MNRAS.396.1640D
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009ApJ…703L..86V
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007ApJ…663L…5V

Next week’s colloquium speaker will be Bill Atwood (UCSC, Physics Dept.). He’ll talk about the series of discoveries and the progress that has been made during the first year of Fermi.

There is a long list of Fermi-LAT collaboration publications that you may want to skim through. We will discuss one of the latest short Science papers during morning coffee on Monday:

Title: A Population of Gamma-Ray Millisecond Pulsars Seen with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
URL: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009Sci…325..848A

For those who won’t access to the Science web site over the weekend, I have a PDF copy at:
http://astro.ucsc.edu/~bulent/else/Atwood.MSP.pdf