"Learning the properties of our Galaxy with Stellar Streams"

The Galactic halo is criss-crossed by long stellar streams that are probably the remnants of defunct globular clusters and dwarf galaxies. I will present the recent discoveries of these structures including several streams that can be traced back to well known halo features. While streams clearly inform us in a direct way about past accretions onto our Galaxy, their most promising property is that they allow us to measure the Galactic acceleration field and they may possibly allow us to reveal the presence of small-...

Read more about ITC Colloquium - Rodrigo Ibata (Université de Strasbourg)

"How to find life on exoplanets: Challenges, ideas and adventures"

The first exoplanets orbiting in the temperate, Habitable Zone, have
revolutionized the field of the search for life in the cosmos. With
their discovery comes the question of how you can tell if there are
signs of a life watching remotely. Where should we look in terms of
wavelength, host star, planet size and mass - among many other.

The formation of the first stars - environmental dependence and observational prospects
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The first stars formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, starting the transition from the Dark Ages to Recombination. They are out of reach from current and planned facilities, and we rely on numerical methods to understand their properties. In this talk, I will focus on the galaxies that the first stars formed in: minihalos. Two large-scale effects -- Lyman-Werner radiation and streaming velocities -- affect these formation regions. With my large cosmological, hydrodynamical... Read more about ITC Colloquium - Anna Schauer (U Texas Austin)

"LIGO-Virgo’s Biggest Black Holes and the Mass Gap"

Abstract: Models for black hole formation from stellar evolution robustly predict the existence of
a pair-instability supernova mass gap in the range ~50 to ~120 solar masses. The binary
black holes of LIGO-Virgo's first two observing runs supported this prediction, showing evidence
for a dearth of component black hole masses above 45 solar masses. Meanwhile, among the
30+ new observations from the third observing run, there are several black holes that appear to
sit above the 45 solar mass limit. I will discuss how...

Read more about ITC Colloquium - Maya Fishbach (Northwestern)