All meetings and special seminars are on Thursday at 3:30 PM in Dearborn Observatory Room 23. Please contact Fred Rasio if you would like to volunteer to present something or suggest a topic for discussion. We can accommodate any format, from short informal talks on recent research results to journal-club style discussions and special seminars by visitors.

May 31, 2007

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Ashley Ruiter (New Mexico State University)
Title: “White Dwarf Binaries and LISA”

May 24, 2007

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Ben Owen (Penn State University)
Title: “Why LIGO results are already interesting” [abstract]

May 17, 2007

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Stephen Zepf (Michigan State University)
Title: “From Galaxy Formation to X-ray Binaries with Globular Clusters” [abstract]

May 3, 2007

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Jason Steffen (Fermilab)
Title: “Detecting Terrestrial Planets in Transiting Planetary Systems” [abstract]

April 26, 2007

Special Astronomy and Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Greg Sivakoff (Ohio State University)
Title: “Low-Mass X-ray Binaries and Globular Clusters in Early-Type Galaxies” [abstract]

April 19, 2007

Group meeting (3:30PM):
Giles and Soko will present highlights of the recent meeting "From Stars to Planets: Connecting our Understanding of Star and Planet Formation". In addition, Marc will present his work in progress on "Parameter estimation of spinning binary black hole inspirals using MCMC".
Prior to the above, John will give an update on the computer cluster and its usage during the first 15 minutes of the meeting.

April 12, 2007

Group meeting (3:30PM):
Richard O'Shaughnessy and Manou Rantsiou will report on the two conferences on GRBs (Amsterdam and Ringberg Castle) that they attended recently.
Richard will also give a short talk on “Astrophysical constraints on BH-NS and NS-NS mergers versus short GRBs.”
Ron Taam will discuss his recent paper on “Black Hole Spin Evolution: Implications for Short-hard Gamma Ray Bursts ...” with Chris Belczynski, Manou Rantsiou, and Marc van der Sluys.

April 5, 2007

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Steinn Sigurdsson (Penn State)
Title: “Exotic Earths” [abstract]

March 29, 2007

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Kostas Tassis (KICP - U of Chicago)
Title: “Are galactic winds shaping the properties of dwarf galaxies?” [abstract]

March 15, 2007

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Mario Juric (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)
Title: “The Eccentricity Distribution of Extrasolar Planets - Evidence of a Violent History?” [abstract]

March 8, 2007

Group Meeting (3:30PM):
John Fregeau, Soko Matsumura and Bart Willems will give short presentations on their work.

March 1, 2007

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Vaso Pavlidou (KICP - U of Chicago)
Title: “Deciphering the GeV Sky: Gamma-Ray Astronomy in the Era of GLAST” [abstract]

February 22, 2007

Group Meeting (3:30PM):
Our new sabbatical visitor Prof. Michael Politano will give an informal talk about his recent work on common envelope evolution and close binaries.

February 15, 2007

*Special Physics and Astronomy Colloquium (4:00PM):
Speaker: Shri Kulkarni (Caltech)
Title: “The Space Interferometer Mission: Parallaxes, Planets and More” [abstract]
*Note location - Room L211, Tech

February 8, 2007

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Ilya Mandel (Caltech)
Title: “Ground-based detection of gravitational waves from intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals” [abstract]

February 1, 2007

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Stelios Kazantzidis (Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology)
Title: “Infalling Satellites and Structure of Galactic Disks in CDM Models” [abstract]

January 25, 2007

Group meeting (3:30PM):
Tassos Fragos will give a short talk on “Low-mass X-ray Binaries in Elliptical Galaxies.”
John Fregeau and Stefan Umbreit will summarize results discussed at the MODEST meeting in Philadelphia last week.

January 18, 2007

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Avery Broderick (Harvard CfA)
Title: “Microarcsecond imaging of Sgr A*: A way to test the Kerr metric” [abstract]

January 11, 2007

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Richard Edgar (University of Rochester)
Title: “Giant Planet Migration” [abstract]

November 30, 2006

Dave Meyer will talk about his recent work on very cold gas clouds in the nearby ISM (astro-ph/0609611) and Vicky Kalogera will discuss the Nature paper on pulsar spins from SN instabilities (astro-ph/0611680).

November 16, 2006

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Ed Thommes (CITA)
Title: “Saving Giant Planet Cores” [abstract]

November 9, 2006

Group meeting (3:30PM):
Chris Belczynski, who is visiting us for several weeks this month, will talk about his recent work on Galactic Center X-ray sources.
Vicky Kalogera and Richard O'Shaughnessy will give us an update on recent results from LIGO.

November 2, 2006

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Loren Hoffman (Harvard)
Title: “Consequences of 3-black hole interactions in hierarchically merging massive galaxies” [abstract]

October 26, 2006 *SPECIAL LOCATION - NU Library Forum Room*

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Professor Matthew Bailes (Swinburne, Australia)
Title: “Public Outreach in 3 Dimensions and the impact of software correlators in precision pulsar timing” [abstract]
Note that this talk will be given in the NU Library Forum Room on the 2nd floor of the South Tower. [map]

October 23, 2006 *MONDAY*

Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM):
Speaker: Dr. Tal Alexander (Weizmann Institute, Israel)
Title: “The Galactic Center as a laboratory for the dynamics of extreme mass ratio gravitational wave sources” [abstract]

October 19, 2006

We will have two short presentations by new members of the group (starting at 3:30PM as usual):
Soko Matsumura on “Saving Planetary Systems: Dead Zones and Planetary Migration” and
Marc van der Sluys on “Formation and Evolution of Compact Binaries”

October 12, 2006

We will have two short talks by new members of the group this Thursday (starting at 3:30PM as usual):
“Exploring Sources for LISA: Astrophysics of Compact Object Systems” by Alex Stroeer and
“Brown Dwarfs from Accreting Triple Systems” by Stefan Umbreit

October 5, 2006

This quarter's first group meeting will take place on Thursday, October 5 at 3:30PM in Dearborn Room 23. New postdocs and visitors will introduce themselves and say a few words about their research.

September 21, 2006

No group meeting. Note that the regularly scheduled Tuesday Astrophysics Seminar will take place on September 21 at 4:00PM. Dr. Mike Eracleous of Penn State University will be giving a talk on “Double Peaked Emission Lines and what they tell us about the Accretion Disks of Active Galaxies”.