Course Objectives:
The aim of this course is to introduce you, the students, to a series of
seminal papers and on more recently published work in the general area of
this semester's broad topic — spanning the 0.05–500 Mpc
(z~0.1) range in distance. The emphasis should lie on the development
and uncertainties of scientific theory and method, rather than on just the
latest discovery or measurement or incremental improvement in a particular
technique.
By unanimous vote, oral reports on the papers selected will be presented in
class at the rate of one ~50 minute presentation per week, one per student.
Oral reports by senior graduate students, postdocs and/or talks by visiting
scientists 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 where it fits within 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, and discussion.
Participation by each student — as demonstrated
by the posing of non-trivial questions — will be taken into
account in determining the grades.
Dates for the presentations(s) by each student will be assigned within the
first week of the first class — first come, first serve (see the
Seminar Schedule below). The choice of paper to discuss will be up to the
student, but certain restrictions and requirements will apply
(see also Tips.., below). I'll be happy
to discuss that choice and offer suggestions.
Presentations:
The majority of the work for this class will revolve around computer-based
presentations (i.e., HTML, PDF, Power Point, etc..). A laptop computer
running Redhat 9 Linux (with Mozilla 1.4.2 browser, Acrobat
Reader 5.0 [PDF], and OpenOffice 1.0.2 [PPT]) 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. If you use a Macintosh,
remember to bring a DVI to VGA adaptor to connect to the LCD projector.
No later than one week before their scheduled
presentation, each student should provide me with the full bibliographic
reference to a paper of their choice. I will place a link on the class
web-page 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 during class.
If you prepare a PowerPoint presentation and do
not plan to use your own laptop, send your
presentation no later than Thursday afternoon
preceding class to me by e-mail as an attachment, so I can check that it
displays properly: proprietary fonts from Microsoft, Adobe, and other
commercial founderies (e.g., math symbols!), often don't on Open Source
machines!
In all cases, after you finish your talk, send the
electronic presentation to me, preferably as a ≤2.0 Mb PDF
file. I will create a link to it into the following table (see Seminar
Schedule below), 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 few or no citations, or mostly
self-citations by the authors, are not suitable for discussion.
Papers are required to (1) have been published in a
peer reviewed journal and (2) have at least
3 citations by researchers other than the authors of that paper.
I.e., discussion of a paper that recently appeared on 'astro-ph' is strongly
discouraged unless the "Comments" give a specific volume/issue of the
peer-reviewed journal where such paper is scheduled to appear and the
citation requirement is satisfied.
For a 50 min presentation, single 4 or 5-page
Letters are not suitable (but three related ones might well 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 toward this number).
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 a paper that I discussed last year 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".
Full resolution versions of figures can often be found on the LANL
(arXiv.org) preprint server:
(http://xxx.lanl.gov/find/astro-ph) by searching for the lead
author(s) and selecting [..., other] as the
download format and then Source (this will allow you to download a
tar-ball, which includes the originally submitted figures). Note, that the
preprint can be of an earlier year than the year of publication.
The following is the schedule of presentations:
Spring 2007 Seminar Schedule
Date
| Person
| Paper
| Title + link to presentation
|
1/19
| Rolf Jansen
|
PS/PDF,
PS/PDF
| Introduction to the Class
Spectrophotometric Properties of Nearby Galaxies
|
1/26
|
|
| No class
|
2/07
| Jan-Uwe Ness (ASU)
|
| SESE Colloquium PSF-101 3:40PM
The X-ray view of Classical Novae
|
2/09
| Raman Narayan
|
PS/PDF
| Comprehensive stellar population models and the disentanglement of
age and metallicity effects,
Worthey, G., 1994, ApJS 95, 107
|
2/16
| Natalie Hinkel
|
PS/PDF
| Galactic bridges and tails,
Toomre, A. & Toomre, J., 1972, ApJ 178, 623
|
2/23
| Wendy Hawley
|
PS/PDF,
PS/PDF
| H II Nuclei in Nearby Galaxies,
Ho, Filippenko & Sargent 1997, ApJ 487, 579 and
Ho & Filippenko 1996, ApJ 466, L83
|
2/27
| John Mather (NASA/GSFC)
|
| Q&A with SESE/Physics students
PSF-101 6:15–7:15PM
Doing a career at NASA
— pizza will be served —
2006 Nobel Laureate Colloquium PSF-166
7:30–9:00PM From the Big Bang to the Nobel Prize
|
3/01
| Scott Ransom (NRAO)
|
| Dept. of Physics Colloquium
PSF-123 4:00PM
A Millisecond Pulsar Jackpot with the Green Bank Telescope
|
3/02
| Vithal Tilvi
|
PS/PDF
| Dwarf Galaxies of the Local Group,
Mateo, M.L. 1998, ARA&A 36, 435
|
3/07
| Paul Davies (ASU/Beyond)
|
| Distinguished Lecturer Series (General Public
Lecture) PSF-173 7:30–8:30PM
Did Life on Earth Come from Mars?
|
3/08
| Paul Davies (ASU/Beyond)
|
| Dept. of Physics Colloquium PSF-123
4:00PM
The Arrow of Time
|
3/09
| Meredith Reitz
|
PS/PDF,
PS/PDF
| XMM-Newton observations of dark matter and entropy profiles in
nearby galaxy clusters,
Pratt & Arnaud 2005, A&A 429, 791 and
Pratt, Arnaud & Pointecouteau 2006, A&A 446, 429
|
3/16
|
|
| Spring break — no class
|
3/23
| Adam Mott
|
PS/PDF
| The BIMA Survey of Nearby Galaxies. I. The Radial Distribution of
CO Emission in Spiral Galaxies,
Regan, M.W., Thornley, M.D., Helfer, T.T., et al. 2001, ApJ 561, 218
|
3/30
| Brian Gleim
|
PS/PDF
| Final results from the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project to measure
the Hubble constant,
Freedman, W.L., Madore, B.F., Gibson, B.K., et al. 2001, ApJ 553, 47
|
4/05
| Sean Raymond (U Colorado)
|
| Special seminar (PSF-226
3:00–4:00PM)
The Formation of Habitable Planets
|
4/06
| Jim Haldenwang
| PS/PDF
| Cosmological applications of gravitational lensing,
Blandford, R.D., & Narayan, R. 1992, ARA&A 30, 311
|
4/11
| Karen Knierman (UofA/Steward)
|
| Special seminar (PSF-226
12:15–1:15PM)
Tidal Tales of Minor Mergers: Star Formation in the Tidal Debris
of Minor Mergers
|
4/13
| Hwihyun Kim
| PS/PDF
| Is the SMC bound to the LMC? The HST proper motion of the SMC,
Kallivayalil, N., van der Marel, R., & Alcock, C., 2006, ApJ 652, 1213
|
4/19
| Marc Audard (Geneva)
|
| Special seminar (PSF-226
1:30–2:30PM)
On the origin of X-rays in young stars and their impact on the
surrounding proto-planetary disk
|
4/20
| Rolf Jansen
|
PS/PDF,
PS/PDF,
PS/PDF
| Measuring Star Formation Rates in Nearby Galaxies
|
4/26
| Anna Pasquali (Max Planck, Heidelberg)
|
| Special seminar (PSF-226
12:00–1:00PM)
Star formation ecology: star clusters & field
|
4/27
| Ignacio Ferreras (King's College)
|
| Special seminar (PSF-226
12:00–1:00PM)
A dark matter telescope to observe early-type galaxies
|
4/27
| Cecilia Lunardini (U. of Washington)
|
| Special seminar (PSF-123
1:30–2:30PM and PSF-566 3:00–3:45PM)
Neutrino Astrophysics and Core Collapse Supernovae and
related future research
|
5/04
|
|
| No class
|
5/16
| Katja Pottschmidt (UC San Diego)
|
| Special seminar (PSF-226
4:00–5:00PM)
Understanding Black Hole Binaries: Recent Highlights
|
|
| recommended Dept. of Physics / School of Earth &
Space Exploration Colloquia/Seminars
|
|
| class introduction / Special Seminar by visiting
scientist or new staff (may be Fri 12:15 PM / Mon 12:30
PM in PSF-226)
|
Click on the links below for the Astrophysics Seminar schedules and student
presentations of previous semesters:
- Fall 2006
— Black Hole Growth & Galaxy Assembly: From First Light
& Reionization to the Present
- Spring 2006 —
Planet Formation and Our Milky Way Galaxy
- Fall 2005 —
Star Formation and Chemical Enrichment: From the First Stars to
Present-day Galaxies
Last update: May 15 2007 [RAJ]
|