Course Objectives:
The aim of this course is to introduce you, the students, to several
seminal papers on topics in astronomy related to this broad topic,
followed by more recently published work. The emphasis should lie on
the development of scientific theory and method, rather than on just
the latest discovery/measurement or incremental improvement in a
particular technique.
Oral reports on the papers selected will be presented in class at the rate
of one ~60 minute presentation per week. Each student will be responsible
for one report. Oral reports by senior graduate students would be on a
voluntary and as-time-permits basis only. Each report should consist of a
general introduction covering the scope of the paper and the larger field
of research of which the paper is part, followed by a more detailed
summary of the paper and a discussion of its impact. Each presentation is
followed by time for questions and answers.
Dates for the talk(s) by each student will be assigned within the first
week of the first class — first come, first serve. The choice of
paper to discuss will be up to the student (but see
Tips.., below!),
but I'll be happy to discuss that choice and/or offer suggestions.
Presentations:
The majority of the work for this class will revolve around computer-based
presentations (i.e., HTML (web-browser), Power Point/OpenOffice,
PDF (acroread), etc..). A laptop computer running Redhat 9 Linux will
be available in the classroom to give the presentation, but students are
free to bring and use their own Windows, Linux or Macintosh laptop should
they have one.
One week before their scheduled presentation, each student should provide me
with the reference to a paper of their choice. I will place a link on the
class web-site to an electronic version of this paper (PDF/Postscript), so
all other students can download and read it, formulate questions, and thus
participate in the discussion of that paper.
When you do not use your own laptop, send your presentation no later than
the afternoon preceding class to me (1) by e-mail as an attachment
(only if less than ~25 Mb!), or (2) send me
the URL of a web-site where you posted the presentation, or (3) hand it to me
by USB memory stick or CDROM otherwise, so it can be checked if it does
display properly, and allow you sufficient time to fix when it does not.
In all cases, after you finish your talk, make the electronic presentation
available to me so I can create a link into the following table (see
Seminar Schedule below) to it, so it can be viewed and consulted
later.
Tips for finding a suitable paper:
Papers that had/have a large impact will be cited by many other authors.
Papers with only very few citations (<25), or only
self-citations by the authors, are not suitable for discussion.
Given the hour-long format of each presentation,
single 4 or 5-page Letters are also not suitable
(but three closely related ones might be). Typically, papers should be
the equivalent of 15–20 pages in a main journal (multi-page tables
or atlasses of figures, and the list of references don't count).
Note, that only peer reviewed papers are
suitable for discussion. Discussion of a paper that recently
appeared on 'astro-ph' is only allowed (but strongly discouraged
given the citation requirement above) if the "Comments" give a
specific volume/issue of the peer-reviewed journal where such paper
is scheduled to appear.
Although not a complete depository of all scientific literature in astronomy
and astrophysics, none the less, astronomy as a science is blessed in having
a very large, full-text digital library: the NASA Astrophysics Data System
(ADS) (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html).
For example, a search for the paper that I'll discuss during our first meeting
(see Seminar Schedule below) returned:
A full text, printable version of this paper may be obtained by clicking
on the "F" link (or by clicking on the full
reference link or "A" link, and following the
links on the abstract page that it opens). Often,
there is also a "G" that points to GIF-format
scans of each page of the paper or an "E" that
points to an HTML version (both may come handy to extract/retrieve a digital
version of a figure, table or equation to insert in your presentation).
To check whether a paper has a sufficient number of citations, one can click
the link marked "C".
NEW:
Here is a link to an incomplete list of
papers that may be suitable for discussion (excluding the ones marked as having
too many pages; in the case of Letters, several related ones could be
discussed).
The following is the schedule of presentations:
Seminar Schedule
Date
| Person
| Paper
| Title + link to presentation
|
8/26
| Rolf Jansen
| PS/PDF
| Introduction to the Class / Setting the stage...(Part I)
Evidence from the motions of old stars that the Galaxy
collapsed, Eggen, Lynden-Bell & Sandage 1962,
ApJ 136, 747
|
9/02
| Rolf Jansen
| PS/PDF
| Setting the stage... (Part II)
Evolution of the Stars and Gas in Galaxies, Tinsley, B.M.
1968, ApJ 151, 547
|
9/09
| Beatrice Perret
| PS/PDF
| The Dependence of the Sub-stellar IMF on the Initial Conditions for
Star Formation, (or:
PPT) Delgado-Donate, E.J., Clarke, C.J., & Bate, M.R.,
2004, MNRAS 347, 759
|
9/16
| Russell Ryan
| PS/PDF
| The Stellar Initial Mass Function in Primordial Galaxies,
Nakamura, F., & Umemura, M. 2002, ApJ 569, 549
|
9/21
| Barbara Whitney (STScI)
|
| Lunch talk PSF-226 1:00 PM
2-D and 3-D Radiation Transfer Models of Young Stellar Objects
|
9/22
| Loris Magnani (Univ. of Georgia)
|
| Colloquium PSF-123 4:00 PM
The Rise and Fall of CH as a Molecular Mass Tracer
|
9/23
| Adam Mott
| PS/PDF
| Fueling nuclear activity in disk galaxies: Starbursts and
monsters, Heller, C.H., & Shlosman, I. 1994, ApJ 424, 84
|
9/29
| Mark Dickinson (NOAO)
|
| Colloquium PSF-123 4:00 PM
Spitzer Observations of the Distant Universe from the Great
Observatories Origins Deep Survey
|
9/30
|
|
| no class
|
10/07
| Angel G. Fuentes
| PS/PDF,
PS/PDF
| The Transition from Population III to Population II Stars,
(or: PPT) Fang, T., & Cen, R. 2004, ApJ 616, L87 and
Venkatesan, A. (2005), astro-ph/0508182
|
10/14
| Hwihyun Kim
| PS(2pp/page)
PS/PDF
| Luminous Infrared Galaxies, (or:
PPT) Sanders, D.B., & Mirabel, I.F. 1996, ARA&A 34,
749 (Ch. 4 + 5, mainly)
|
10/21
| Michael Lesniak
| PS/PDF
| Evidence for Solar Metallicities in Massive Star-forming Galaxies at
z>2, Shapley, A., Erb, D., Pettini, M., Steidel, C., &
Adelberger, K. 2004, ApJ 612, 108
|
10/28
| Wendy Hawley
| PS/PDF
| H II Regions and the Abundance Properties of Spiral
Galaxies (or:
PPT), Zaritsky, D., Kennicutt, R.C., Jr., & Huchra, J.P.
1994, ApJ 420, 87
|
11/04
| Carola Ellinger
| PS/PDF
| The Evolution and Explosion of Massive Stars. II. Explosive
Hydrodynamics and Nucleosynthesis (or:
PPT), Woosley, S.E., & Weaver, T.A. 1995, ApJS 101, 181
|
11/07
| Nor Pirzkal (STScI)
|
| Monday Lunchtalk eGRAPES: emission-line objects in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field
|
11/10
| George Rieke (Steward Obs.)
|
| Colloquium PSF-123 4:00 PM
New Spitzer Results on Debris Disks
|
11/11
|
|
| Veterans Day — no class (the Special
Seminar announced earlier is canceled)
|
11/17
| Joseph Silk (Univ. of Oxford)
|
| Colloquium PSF-123 4:00 PM
The Dark Side of the Universe
|
11/18
| Katie Kaleida
| PS/PDF
| The effects of interactions on spiral galaxies. I – Nuclear
activity and star formation (or:
PPT), Keel, W.C, Kennicutt, R.C., Jr., Hummel, E. &
van der Hulst, J.M. 1985, AJ 90, 708
|
11/25
|
|
| Thanksgiving — no class
|
12/02
| Brian Gleim
| PS/PDF
| Nucleosynthesis in Supernovae (or:
PPT), F. Hoyle & W.A. Fowler 1960, ApJ 132, 565
|
|
| recommended Dept. of Physics & Astronomy
Colloquia (Thu 4:00 PM in PSF-123)
|
|
| class introduction / Special Seminar by visiting
scientist (Fri 12:15 PM / Mon 12:30 PM in PSF-226)
|
Do you have suggestions for next semester's topic? Would you like to continue
next semester with this broad topic, but focus on more recent papers?
Let me know:
Rolf.Jansen@asu.edu.
Last update: Dec 9 2005 [RAJ]
|