Colloquia
NOTE:
- All Cornell community members should take personal responsibility and demonstrate COVID-19 etiquette.
- Hybrid participation: Zoom and in person (Rm 105 Space Sciences Building)
| Date | Topic | Speaker | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09/05/2024 | TBA | Dept of Astronomy, "Young Researchers at Cornell Colloquium" Speakers, Dr. Ligia Coelho, Dr. Dan Lalich, and Dr. Ryan Challener | |||
| 09/12/2024 | "Atmospheres on Rocky Exoplanets: Promising Early Results from JWST" | Ryan McDonald - University of Michigan | |||
| 09/19/2024 | "Towards simulating, learning and emulating all possible universes with CAMELS" | Shy Genel - Simons Foundation, Flatiron Institute | |||
| 09/26/2024 | "White dwarf kicks, hot Jupiter formation and spotted binaries" | David Martin - Tufts University | |||
| 10/03/2024 | "Mysteries of fast radio bursts" | Dongzi Li, Princeton | |||
| 10/10/2024 | "Building a Legacy: the Rubin Observatory Legasi Survey of Space and Time" | Federica Bianco, University of Delaware | |||
| 10/17/2024 | "Simulations: A Necessarily Incomplete (And Completely Necessary) Lens on Galaxies in the Local Universe" | Sarah Loebman, University of California | |||
| 10/24/2024 | "Tracing Star Formation Across Scales: A Case Study in the Solar Neighborhood" | Catherine Zucker, Harvard University | |||
| 10/31/2024 | "lluminating the low-redshift universe with the CMB" | Gold Lecture: Lyman Page, Princeton | |||
| 11/07/2024 | Rescheduled for Spring Semester | Feel free to attend Carl Sagan's 90th Birthday Celebration 11/9. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/10/cornell-honors-sagans-90th-birthday-celebration-science
| |||
| 11/14/2024 | "Deciphering cosmic history and cosmic-ray physics with radio emission" | Allison Matthews, Carnegie Science | |||
| 11/21/2024 | "Rolling in the deep: probing the hidden dynamics of the outer solar system’s buried oceans using tides and rotation" | Hamish Hay, University of Oxford | |||
| 12/05/2024 | "Reconstructing the History of the Solar System: Using Astronomical Observations, Laboratory Analyses, and Theories" | Driss Takir, NASA | |||
| 12/10/2024 (Tuesday) | “Understanding Supermassive Black Holes with Low-Frequency Gravitational Waves” | Sarah Vigeland, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Radio Astronomy Faculty Candidate) | |||
12/12/2024
| TBA | Shami Chatterjee, Cornell University (Radio Astronomy Faculty Candidate) | |||
| 01/21/2025 (Tuesday) | TBA | Stephen Taylor, Vanderbilt University (Radio Astronomy Faculty Candidate) |
Planetary Lunch
The Planetary Lunch Seminar Series (PLunch) is an informal seminar series with talks that are relevant to everybody with an interest in planetary science. Speakers include both members of the Cornell community and visitors. Talks are aimed to appeal to and presented by faculty members, research associates, and both graduate and undergraduate students from various academic departments. The seminars will be on every other Monday listed below at 12:15 pm in the Terzian Conference Room (Rm 622 Space Sciences Bldg). For a Zoom link, please contact Alexia Kubas (ak2248@cornell.edu).
NOTE:
- Attendance is restricted to Cornell students, staff and faculty.
- All Cornell community members should take personal responsibility and demonstrate COVID-19 etiquette.
Date | Topic | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 26, 2024 | ||
| Sep 9, 2024 | “Planetary Rings: Structure, Composition, and Evolution” | Dr. Phil Nicholson (Cornell) |
| Sep 23, 2024 | ||
| Oct 7, 2024 | "The colors of a changing planet: the melting Arctic as a sign of life" | Dr. Ligia Fonseca Coelho (Cornell) |
| Oct 21, 2024 | "Clouds and Hazes in GJ 1214b’s Metal-Rich Atmosphere" | Dr. Isaac Malsky (JPL) |
| Nov 4, 2024 | “Formation of silicious structures in hot springs: Implications for searching for life on Mars" | Dr. Carolina Munoz-Saez (EAS) |
| Nov 18, 2024 | "Do Li and B Variations in Martian Meteorites Record Magmatic Degassing?" | Dr. Megan Holycross (Cornell) |
Astrophysics Lunch
Astrophysics Lunch is a series of informal talks on topics related to theoretical astrophysics, gravitational physics, and cosmology. Speakers are free to present their own research or present papers that they find of particular interest. The audience consists of faculty members, research staff, as well as graduate and undergraduate students, so talks should be at a level accessible to most. Astrophysics Lunch is open to talks from all members of the Cornell community, as well as to visiting scientists. We will reschedule a local speaker in order to accommodate visitors.
Astrophysics Lunch will be held on Wednesdays at 12:10 PM in the Terzian Conference Room (Rm 622). For a Zoom link, please contact Larry Kidder (kidder@astro.cornell.edu).
NOTE:
- Attendance is restricted to Cornell students, staff and faculty.
- All Cornell community members should take personal responsibility and demonstrate COVID-19 etiquette.
| Date | Topic | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 28, 2024 | ||
| Sep 4, 2024 | "Detecting and Characterizing Optical Transients with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite" | Rahul Jayaraman (MIT) |
| Sep 11, 2024 | "The Diversity of Massive Stellar Deaths and Relativistic Jets: Unraveling a Cosmic Tandem" | Gokul Srinivasaragavan (U. Maryland) |
| Sep 18, 2024 | "Dynamical formation or merging compact binaries” | Prof. Dong Lai |
| Sep 25, 2024 | "Magnetic field and tide of star, planet and moon" | Prof. Xing Wei (Beijing Normal U.) |
| Oct 2, 2024 | "New self-similar solutions to the interaction phase of strong explosions" | Prof. Eric Coughlin (Syracuse) |
| Oct 9, 2024 | ||
| Oct 16, 2024 | ||
| Oct 23, 2024 | ||
| Oct 30, 2024 | ||
| Nov 6, 2024 | "Black Hole Quasi-normal Modes" | Prof. Saul Teukolsky |
| Nov 13, 2024 | ||
| Nov 20, 2024 | ||
| Nov 27, 2024 | Thanksgiving Break | |
| Dec 4, 2024 |
Galaxy and Cosmology Lunch
The Galaxy and Cosmology Lunch Series is held on the Tuesdays listed below, from 12:00pm to 1:00pm in the Terzian Conference Room (Rm 622 Space Sciences Bldg). For a Zoom link, please contact Thomas Nikola (tn46@cornell.edu).
NOTE:
- Attendance is restricted to Cornell students, staff and faculty.
- All Cornell community members should take personal responsibility and demonstrate COVID-19 etiquette.
In general, the topics are related to galactic and extragalactic astronomy, and large-scale structure. The audience consists of faculty members, research staff, as well as graduate and undergraduate students. Galaxy Lunch is open to talks from all members of the Cornell Astronomy department, as well as to visiting scientists and speakers from different disciplines/departments.
| Date | Topic | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 27, 2024 | Introduction & "JWST observations of the triply-lensed galaxy MACS0647-JD" | Thomas Nikola |
| Sep 3, 2024 | "Relativistic SZ temperatures and hydrostatic mass bias for massive clusters in the FLAMINGO simulations" (Kay et al. 2024 arXiv:2404.08539) | Victoria Butler |
| Sep 10, 2024 | "Reionization after JWST: a photon budget crisis?" (Munoz et al., 2024) | Dr. Abby Crites |
| Sep 17, 2024 | "Status of the CMB-S4 project - Developing an All-Chile Design" | Dr. Mike Niemack |
| Sep 24, 2024 | "Characterizing the contribution of dust-obscured star formation at 𝑧 ≳ 5 using 18 serendipitously identified [CII] emitters" (van Leeuwen et al. 2024) | Dr. Dongwoo Chung |
| Oct 1, 2024 | "Multiphase circum-galactic medium of the BCG in MACS1931" | Laya Ghodsi (UBC) |
| Oct 8, 2024 | "Evidence for a Shallow Evolution in the Volume Densities of Massive Galaxies at z=4 to 8 from CEERS" | Cody Duell |
| Oct 15, 2024 | FALL BREAK | |
| Oct 22, 2024 | cancelled | |
| Oct 29, 2024 | "Can Cross-Correlations Deliver Measurements Of The Epoch Of Reionization" | Hannah Sousa-Fronenberg (McGill) |
| Nov 5, 2024 | "Dark Energy Survey Year 3: Blue Shear" | Ben Keller |
| Nov 12, 2024 | "An APPSS-focused Survey of PPS and Infall Studies" | Catie Ball |
| Nov 19, 2024 | "Constraining axion-like dark matter candidates with time-varying CMB polarization rotation" | Zach Huber |
| Nov 26, 2024 | "Little Red Dots at an Inflection Point: Ubiquitous 'V-Shaped' Turnover Consistently Occurs at the Balmer Limit" | Sam Walker |
| Dec 3, 2024 | "Dispersion Measures of High-Redshift Synchrotron Sources" | Dr. Richard Lovelace |
The Thomas Gold Lecture Series
On the occasion of the retirement of the world famous astrophysicist, Tommy Gold, the University established the Thomas Gold Lectureship in Astronomy to bring outstanding scientists to Cornell for brief visits.
Former Thomas Gold Lecturers:
- 1987-88: Peter Goldreich (Caltech)
- 1988-89 Joseph Taylor (Princeton)
- 1989-90 Martin Rees (University of Cambridge)
- 1990-91 Dennis Sciama (University of Oxford)
- 1991-92 Gordon Pettengill (MIT)
- 1992-93 Tony Hewish (University of Cambridge)
- 1993-94 Irwin Shapiro (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
- 1994-95 Wallace Sargent (Caltech)
- 1995-96 Lyman Spitzer (Princeton)
- 1996-97 Igor Novikov (Theoretical Astrophysics Center, Copenhagen)
- 1997-98 David Schramm (University of Chicago)
- 1998-99 Mal Ruderman (Columbia University)
- 1999-00 Bohdan Paczynski (Princeton)
- 2000-01 Clifford Will (Washington University)
- 2001-02 Frank Shu (UC Berkeley)
- 2002-03 Vera Rubin (Carnegie Institution of Washington)
- 2003-04 Charles Townes (UC Berkeley)
- 2004-05 Geoff Marcy (UC Berkeley)
- 2005-06 Roger Blandford (Stanford University)
- 2006-07 Andrew Lyne (University of Manchester)
- 2009-10 Don Brownlee (University of Washington)
- 2010-11 Rashid Sunyaev (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics)
- 2011-12 Maria Zuber (MIT)
- 2012-13 David Jewitt (UCLA)
- 2013-14 J. Richard Bond (University of Toronto)
- 2014-15 Reinhard Genzel (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics)
- 2015-16 Simon White (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics)
- 2016-17 Adam Burrows (Princeton)
- 2017-18 Renu Malhotra (U. Arizona)
- 2018-19 Bruce Draine (Princeton)
- 2021-22 Scott Tremaine (U. Toronto)
- 2022-23 Alessandro Morbidelli (Lagrange, Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur)
- 2023-24: Victoria Kaspi (McGill University)
- 2024-25: Lyman Page Jr. (Princeton)
The Salpeter Lecture Series
The Salpeter Lecture Series was established in 1998 to honor Professor Edwin E. Salpeter, one of the most important astrophysicists of the 20th century. Under the auspices of the lectureship, distinguished astronomers and astrophysicists are invited to visit Cornell for one to two weeks.
Former Salpeter Lecturers:
- 1999 Sterl Phinney (CalTech)
- 2000 Lars Bildsten (Univ. California-Berkeley)
- 2001 Dave Stevenson (CalTech)
- 2002 John Carlstrom (Univ. Chicago)
- 2003 Shri Kulkarni (CalTech)
- 2004 Andrea Ghez (UCLA)
- 2005 Victoria Kaspi (McGill)
- 2006 Avi Loeb (Harvard)
- 2007 Jonathan Lunine (Univ. of Arizona)
- 2008 Alexei Filippenko (Univ. California-Berkeley)
- 2009 Gilles Chabrier (ENS Lyon)
- 2010 David Spergel (Princeton University)
- 2011 Sara Seager (MIT)
- 2012 Elliot Quataert (UC Berkeley)
- 2013 Eve Ostriker (Princeton)
- 2014 Adam Showman (University of Arizona)
- 2015 Daniel Eisenstein (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
- 2016 Fiona A. Harrison (California Institute of Technology)
- 2017 Alyssa Goodman (Harvard)
- 2018 Fred Rasio (Northwestern)
- 2019 May Ruth Murray-Clay (UCSC)
- 2019 Nov Brian Metzger (Columbia University)
- 2022 Vicky Kalogera (Northwestern University)
- 2023 Matias Zaldarriaga, IAS Princeton
- 2024 Jenny Greene, Princeton
The Yervant Terzian Lecture Series
On the occasion of Yervant Terzian's 70th birthday, the University established the Yervant Terzian Lectureship in Astronomy to bring outstanding scientists to Cornell for brief visits. The Lectureship was endowed by a generous gift from Friend of Astronomy Charles Mund, Jr.
Former Terzian Lecturers:
- 2010 Nobel Prize Winner, John C. Mather (NASA/GSFC)
- 2011 Mario Livio (Space Telescope Science Institute)
- 2012 Nobel Prize Winner, Michel Mayor (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
- 2013 Jay Pasachoff (Williams College)
- 2014 Bruce Balick (University of Washington)
- 2015 Ken Kellermann (National Radio Astronomy Observatory)
- 2016 Nobel Prize Winner, Kip Thorne (California Institute of Technology)
- 2017 Shri Kulkarni (Director Caltech Optical Observatories) (Watch Dr Kulkarni's Lecture The Restless Universe (Palomar Transient Factory)
- 2018 Silvia Torres-Peimbert (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
- 2021 Shep Doeleman (Harvard University)
- 2022 Paul Davies (Arizona State University)
- 2023: Meenakshi Wadhwa (Arizona State)
The William E. and Elva F. Gordon Distinguished Lectureship
William E. Gordon, then professor of electrical engineering at Cornell, proposed the construction of the Arecibo telescope in 1958 to study the Earth's ionosphere via the incoherent scatter of powerful radio waves from the individual electrons in the ionospheric plasma. He also understood that the telescope would be able to make significant contributions to planetary science and the then relatively new field of radio astronomy. Gordon raised the funding for the telescope and organized its construction. Completed in 1963, the 305m (1000ft) diameter telescope and its powerful radar systems were continuously upgraded over the intervening years and were used to made major advances in the areas of ionospheric physics, radio astronomy and planetary science. Sadly, after fifty-seven years of ground-breaking contributions to astronomy, planetary science and ionospheric physics the telescope collapsed on December 1, 2020.
The Gordon Lectures are made possible by an endowment by Tom and Betty Talpey. Tom and Betty Talpey were one of the families that moved with the Gordon's to Arecibo in the summer of 1960 to supervise the telescope's construction and build the observing instrumentation.
Former Gordon Lecturers:
- 2002 Harold Ewen (University of Massachusetts)
- 2003 Tor Hagfors (Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy)
- 2005 Gordon Pettengill (MIT)
- 2006 Jocelyn Bell Burnell (University of Oxford)
- 2008 Lewis Duncan (Rollins College)
- 2009 Shri Kulkarni (Caltech)
- 2011 Joint Lecture & Arecibo Observatory Staff Event:
Donald Farley (Cornell University)
Miguel Feyjoo (Engineer)
Herbert Carlson (Utah State University)
Carl Heiles (UC Berkeley)
Donald B. Campbell (Cornell University) - 2013 Lara Waldrop (Univ. Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and Jean-Luc Margot (UCLA)
- 2015 Xavier Siemens (Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
- 2018 Gregg Hallinan (Caltech)
- 2019 Amelie Saintonge (University College London)
- 2021 Maura McLaughlin (West Virginia University)
- 2022 Mark Devlin (University of Pennsylvania)
- 2023 Heino Falcke (Radboud University, Nijmegen)