9/1-9/5 

SHAO Astrophysics Colloquia

Title: Accretion Disk Outbursts: MHD Simulations (Finally) Confront Reality

Speaker: Omer Blaes (UC Santa Barbara)

Time: Thursday, 3:00pm, September 4th

Location: Lecture Hall, 3rd floor

Abstract: Accretion disks around compact objects are responsible for some of the most powerful phenomena that we observe in the universe, from gamma-ray bursts to quasars. Stresses in the flow that transport angular momentum outward and allow gravitational binding energy to be released are central to the physics of these flows. For over twenty years, the dominant theoretical paradigm for these stresses is turbulence driven by an instability of weak magnetic fields embedded in the flow. Numerical simulations of this turbulence have revealed much about how these stresses might work, but until recently, they have not successfully explained (never mind predicted) the most significant quantitative observational constraints: the outburst time scales of dwarf novae and low mass X-ray binaries. I will describe recent progress on understanding the behaviour of these systems through simulations that incorporate the physics that is essential for exploring the physics of these phenomena

Group meetings and additional talks 

Stellar Cluster and Galaxy Seminar group seminar

Title: Searching for and Characterization of Galactic Open Clusters toward the Galactic Anti-Center with Pan-STARRS1

Location: 1618; Contact: Jianling Gan  

Speaker: Lin, Chien-Cheng

Time: Wednesday, 10:30pm, September 3

Newcomers

Sakurako Okamoto

Office: 1602 (temporary)

Position: Postdoctoral researcher

Research interests: Dwarf galaxies, satellites of the Milky Way, large optical surveys  

Chien-Cheng Lin（林建争）

Office: 1517

Position: Postdoctoral researcher

Research interests: Star clusters, Galactic structure, PanSTARRS survey

Haritma Gaur

Office: 1513

Position: Postdoctoral researcher

Research interests: Active galactic nuclei, multi-wavelength observations