AST 494 / AST 591 — Astrophysics Seminar — Fall 2008
The Ultraviolet Universe:
Hot is ``Cool'', for Young and Old

Scroll down to table of Fall 2008 Seminar and Journal Club presentations and presenters  

Image from: C. Martin, et al. 2005, ApJ Letters, 619, L1

Image from: R. A. Windhorst, et al. 2002, ApJ Suppl., 143, 113-158

Course Objectives:
The aim of this course is to introduce you, the students, to a series of short seminal papers and on more recently published work in the general area of this semester's broad topic. The emphasis should lie on the development of scientific theory and method, rather than on just the latest discovery or measurement or incremental improvement in a particular technique.
Oral reports on the papers selected will be presented in class at the rate of one 50 minute or two ~25 minute presentations per week. Each student will be responsible for one long or two short reports. Oral reports by senior graduate students and postdocs would be on a voluntary and as-time-permits basis only, but there are still several times slots available. 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.
Dates for the presentations(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 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 or CentOS 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 should they have one. If you use a Macintosh, remember to bring a DVI to VGA adapter.
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-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 the afternoon preceding class to me by e-mail as an attachment so I can check that it displays properly (Windows' proprietary fonts, e.g., math symbols, often don't!). In all cases, after you finish your talk, send the electronic presentation 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 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 25 min presentation, single 4 or 5-page Letters are not suitable (but two related ones might well be). Typically, papers should be the equivalent of 8–10 pages in a main journal (multi-page tables or atlases of figures, and the list of references don't count).
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). The best astronomical reprint server is on: http://xxx.lanl.gov/find/astro-ph ).

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".

For example, a series of papers that put this class in context and that can be found on: LANL and ADS , respectively, are:

Space Shuttle Launch Towards the Hubble Space Telescope in Feb. 2009

For details and updates, watch the NASA Launch Calendar on:

http://hubblesite.org/servicing_mission_4/

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/shuttleoperations/index.html

If you are not certain what paper to choose for this semesters Journal Club, or need some more background information, please browse some of the review papers in the following conference proceedings:

2008, ''The Evolution of Galaxies through the Neutral Hydrogen Window'', Eds. R. Minchin, \& E. Momjian, AIP Conf. Proc., Vol. 1035, 1-444 (New York: American Institute of Physics)

2006, ''Astrophysics in the Far Ultraviolet: Five Years of Discovery with FUSE'' Eds. G. Sonneborn, H. W. Moos \& B-G Andersson, ASP Conf. Proc., Vol. CS-348 (San Francisco: Astron. Soc. Pac.)

1997, The Ultraviolet Universe at Low and High Redshift, Ed. W. H. Waller et al., AIP Conf. Proc., Vol. 408., p. 1-497 (New York: American Institute of Physics) and find the corresponding journal papers by the relevant first authors on

ADS or on LANL . "

At the end of each class, you will be asked to evaluate the student speaker. Please fill out the evaluation form, and return it to the instructor at the end of the class. Like the real refereeing process in publishing scientific papers, you may remain anonymous. But please be polite in your comments, because you too one day will be judged by your peers!

The following is the schedule of AST 591/494 presentations. During the first day of classes (Aug. 29, we will discuss the program for the semester. On Fr. Sept. 19, we will have a guest speaker, Dr. Warren Brown (Harvard Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA), as indicated below:

Fall 2008 Seminar and Journal Club Schedule

Date	Presenter(s)/PPT	Paper(s)/PDF	Title(s) + URL's to PUBLISHED paper(s)
8/29	Rogier Windhorst	Intro to Class	Class philosophy, theme, and rules: http://windhorst591.asu.edu/
9/05	Rogier Windhorst	The Galaxy Evolution Explorer:	A Space Ultraviolet Survey Mission ; On-Orbit Performance ; GALEX Number Counts in FUV and NUV ; An HST Survey of the Mid-UV Morphology of Nearby Galaxies --- PDF of Presentation
9/12	William Gray	Kauffmann et al. 2007, ApJ Suppl. 173, 357	Ongoing Formation of Bulges and Black Holes in the Local Universe: New Insights from GALEX
9/19	Dr. Warren Brown (CfA)	Lunchtalk Abstract	Main paper: Hypervelocity Stars and Massive Black Holes ; see also: 2008arXiv0808.2469B ; and 2007ApJ...671.1708B
9/26	Mike Rutkowski	S. Kaviraj et al. 2007, ApJ Suppl. 173, 619	UV-Optical Colors as Probes of Early-Type Galaxy Evolution
10/03	Cody Raskin	S. Gezari, et al. 2008, ApJ, 676, 944	UV/Optical Detections of Candidate Tidal Disruption Events by GALEX and CFHTLS
10/10	Teresa Ashcraft	C. Martin, et al. 2007, ApJ Suppl. 173, 415	The Star Formation and Extinction Coevolution of UV-Selected Galaxies over 0.05
10/17	Simon Porter	Welsh, B. Y., et al. 2007, ApJ Suppl. 173, 673;   +intro paper	The Detection of M Dwarf UV Flare Events in the GALEX Data Archives + background paper
10/24	Hwihyun Kim	K. Schawinski et al. 2007, ApJS, 173, 512	The Effect of Environment on the Ultraviolet Color-Magnitude Relation of Early-type Galaxies
10/31	Kaz Tamura	Boissier et al. 2007, ApJS, 173, 524 ; and Boissier et al. 2005, ApJ, 619, L83	Radial Variation of Attenuation and Star Formation in the Largest Late-Type Disks Observed with GALEX ; and Extinction Radial Profiles of M83 from GALEX Ultraviolet Imaging
11/07	Dr. Jonathan Tan (Univ. Florida)	Lunchtalk Abstract	Tan, J. C., 2008arXiv0808.3918, "Population III.1 stars: formation, feedback and evolution of the IMF" ; PDF file
11/14	Natalie Hinkel	Hoopes, C., et al. 2007, ApJS, 173, 441	The Diverse Properties of the Most Ultraviolet-Luminous Galaxies Discovered by GALEX
11/20	Weston Hanoka	Gil de Paz, A., et al. 2007, ApJS, 173, 1	The GALEX Ultraviolet Atlas of Nearby Galaxies
11/28	Turkey Y		Thanksgiving holiday
12/05	Rogier Windhorst	Windhorst et al., 2002, ApJS 143, 113	An HST Survey of the Mid-UV Morphology of Nearby Galaxies ---
12/12			(Final exam week)

		Regular Journal Club topics
		class introduction (12:15 PM in PSF-226)

For astronomy classes and other events at ASU this semester, see also:

http://windhorst113.asu.edu/links.html

SESE or Physics Colloquia this semester:

SESE Colloquia — We. 4:10-5:00 pm in PSF-101

Physics Colloquia — Th. 4:00-5:00 pm in PSF-123.

Particle Physics and Astrophysics Seminar — We. 2-3 pm PSF-462.

Related Astrophysics Seminar schedules and student presentations in semesters:

• Fall 2008
• Fall 2006
• Spring 2006
• Fall 2005.

Relevant Astronomy Colloquia at ASU in Fall 2008:

24 September — Dr. Robert O'Connell (University of Virginia) on:

``Star-Formation in Massive Cluster Cooling Flows''

http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~rwo/

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