New Frontiers in the Radio Universe: Protoplanetary Disks to the Far Universe

Friday, February 17, 2012: 8:00 AM-9:30 AM
Room 121 (VCC West Building)
The Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA) are new and transformational international research facilities with sensitivity, resolution, frequency coverage, and image quality that exceed those of existing astronomy facilities at centimeter to submillimeter wavelengths by up to two orders of magnitude. Both ALMA and EVLA are enabling multinational teams to open new scientific frontiers, dramatically expanding the discovery space that astronomers can explore and yielding fresh insights across much of modern astrophysics, from the molecular clouds and protoplanetary disk systems where new stars and planets form, to the stellar nurseries in the Milky Way and other galaxies, to the most distant galaxies and quasars. ALMA is an international partnership of Europe, Japan, and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile, where the array is located at 5,000 m elevation in the northern Andes. Located on the San Agustin Plains of central New Mexico, the EVLA is a North American partnership, with the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the National Science Foundation as the lead partners. Additional key contributions are provided by the National Research Council in Canada and the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia Tecnologia in Mexico.


Organizer:
Mark T. Adams, National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)
Speakers:
David J. Wilner, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Peering into the Birthplaces of Solar Systems
Christine Wilson, McMaster University
Unveiling Stellar Nurseries in Other Galaxies
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