Fuel tank, waste dump, and recycling center: The circumgalactic medium over cosmic time
Presented by John O'Meara
RASC Calgary Centre
This talk will take place on Thursday July 15, 2021 @ 7:30 pm MDT (9:30 pm EDT)
An introduction to the region between the galaxies we see in starlight and intergalactic space known as the circumgalactic medium, as told by the most powerful tools in astronomy.
In the last decade, the combination of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the largest telescopes in the world on the ground, along with state of the art simulations and theory have shown that the regions of gas surrounding galaxies, the so-called circumgalactic medium (CGM), can dominate the history of galaxy formation and evolution over billions of years. In this talk, I will introduce the CGM, show how our understanding has changed over the last few years, and will describe the powerful new tools coming online that will take the study of the CGM into the high-precision era. I will also give a brief tour of one of the most powerful observational tools we have on the ground to study the CGM today: the Keck Observatory.
Biography: John O’Meara is the Chief Scientist of the W.M. Keck Observatory, one of the most scientifically productive observatories on the planet. John is an observational astronomer and cosmologist, with interests in galaxy formation and evolution, experimental tests of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, and federal science policy in the United States. John has a deep interest in developing future astronomical capabilities, and is a science team lead for the LUVOIR space telescope mission concept.
Passcode: 211771