Summer Students Lecture Series

Wednesday, June 22, at 15:10 in Cody Hall

Forming Exoplanets, by Dr. Mariangela Bonavita

For decades all our knowledge on planet formation has been based on the observation of the only planets we knew: the ones in our solar system. But the discovery of a large variety of planetary systems around other stars, most of them very different from our own, arose many questions about how these planet formed, some of them still without answer.

In this talk I will give a brief overview of the present knowledge about planet formation, starting from our solar system and then moving to the extra-solar planets, trying to answer the following questions:

• Is there a theory able to explain both the characteristics of the planets in our solar system and the ones around other stars?
• Are all the planetary systems created in the same way or is there more than a mechanism to form a planet?
• How big is the impact of the characteristics of the host star (mass, presence of stellar/sub-stellar companions, etc.) on the planet formation process?

We're recording some of these introductory undergrad lectures given by the post-docs in Astronomy at UofT.

Aim and level of the lectures

The idea behind this lecture series is to give our summer students (DI, DAA and CITA) an overview and background information on a variety of astronomical topics, to help them with their research, and to place seminars, journal clubs and other discussions that they may attend here in context.

Lectures are given by postdocs who actively work on these topics (except maybe the first one :-). These lectures are informal (no homework, no exams, no grading) and we plan to make them interactive and fun!

Everyone is welcome to attend, so if you would like to brush up your knowledge on e.g. exoplanets, pulsars or dark matter, or if you are interested in getting a one-hour overview on a specific research topic, please drop by!

All lectures (except the first one) will take place on Wednesdays, 15:10 - 16:00. Most lectures will be held in Cody Hall.

Detecting Exoplanets 101, by Dr. Nicholas Law

The pace of extrasolar planet discovery has reached exhilarating levels, enabled by new technology, new telescopes, and new methods of finding planets.

I describe the wide range of cutting-edge techniques being used to find and characterize planetary systems, the new instruments being built for the next generation of planet searches, and finally take a brief look at the far future of exoplanet science.

Star Formation 101, by Dr. Koraljka Muzic

Get the slides of the lecture in PDF format.

In this lecture, I give an overview of the main ingredients and the physical processes that are necessary to create a new star. We will follow our future star at different stages of its development, from the fragmentation of its parental molecular cloud all the way towards the start of its life at the main sequence.

I present observations of different phenomena associated with the star formation process.

Finally, I introduce some of the challenging topics that form an active part of the current astrophysical research, such as the formation of massive stars and brown dwarfs.

Communicating Science 101, by Dr. Johannes Hirn

Get the slides of the lecture in PDF format.

The same online technologies that pulled the rug from under the traditional media also enable universities to step in and fill the information gap.

This situation brings more opportunities for the next generation of scientists to communicate with the public, especially in places —such as the Dunlap Institute— that encourage outreach besides research and teaching.

By giving you basic written, spoken, and visual communication tips, this talk should help you prepare for such a career, and hopefully convince you to enrol in a writing or acting class.

Instrumentation 101, by Dr. Suresh Sivanandam

Get the slides of the lecture in PDF format.

New developments in astronomical instrumentation open entirely new discovery spaces in astronomy. In fact, new instrumentation has often been the driver of very important discoveries.

I will discuss the physical processes that directly affect our ability to detect and characterize astrophysical objects.

I will also give a brief overview of the types of instrumentation commonly used in astronomy such as imagers and spectrographs. Finally, I will discuss future ambitious instrumentation projects that will shape the scientific landscape over the next 10 years.

Credit: TMT Observatory Corporation

Stellar Systems 101, by Dr. Markus Janson

Get the slides of the lecture in PDF format.

Although our own Solar system only contains one star, many stellar systems include two stars (binaries), or an even greater number of stellar components.

In this lecture, we will discuss the variety of architectures of stellar systems, addressing questions such as what fraction of stellar systems are multiple, and how the stars in a multiple system orbit each other. Some emphasis will be put on explaining Kepler's laws of celestial motion, which can be used as a basis to understand the orbits of everything from stars to planets to moons and man-made satellites.

Finally, we will examine how the study of binary systems has been, and remains, crucial to the determination of the fundamental properties of stars.

Credit: M. Janson / AstraLux team

Stars 101, by Dr. Anne-Marie Weijmans

Get the slides of the lecture in PDF format.

This lecture will be an introduction to stars and stellar evolution, and will provide you with some background for subsequent lectures, as well as make you familiar with some definitions which you will hear during e.g seminars and astro-ph discussions.

We will first talk about the properties of stars, their burning mechanisms and what makes a star a star. Then we will discuss spectral classification of stars and stellar types. Before heading into stellar evolution, we will first study the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram and discuss its many applications in astronomy.

If time permits, we'll also make a short detour into cosmology and discuss the importance of the so-called Cepheid stars. Finally, we'll look at stars at the end of their lifetime and the remnants that they leave behind.

Credit: SOHO-EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA

Meet the grad students of our host institution:
the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics

To know what it's like to be a young researcher in Astronomy at the University of Toronto, there's no better source than the graduate students in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

In this video, Jacqueline, Bryce and Mubdi give us three completely different viewpoints on Astronomy, and tell us:

- How they got into it,
- What their day-to-day job is like,
- Why it all matters.

Whether it is the night sky that makes you dream, the technology that excites you, or the mind-bending questions that inspire you, each of these passions can lead to Astronomy.

You'll also need healthy servings of curiosity, hard work and persistence.