Search the AAO:
International Year of Astronomy logo
General Links
Professional Links

AAO Colloquia

What's the next Colloquium? When is it? Where is it?

Colloquia and Talks at Epping.

Informal Talks at Epping

AAO and other Australian Conferences

Colloquia and Talks at the AAO/ATNF Epping.

The AAO organises frequent colloquia at our Epping headquarters. These are usually held on a Thursday afternoon, normally at 3:30pm, though other dates are occasionally scheduled. We welcome talks from visiting astronomers - if you are passing through Sydney and would like to tell us about your work, please contact Quentin Parker (qap@ics.mq.edu.au)

The ATNF (Australia Telescope National Facility) also organises colloquia at their Epping offices. A schedule for these talks can be found here.

The AAO and ATNF also occasionally organise Joint Colloquia when the speaker is likely to be of interest to both radio and optical communities. These talks will be found in both the list below, and the ATNF schedule.

A list of past speakers can be found here.

Informal Seminars

As well as the more formal colloquia described above, there are a number of informal discussion groups which meet regularly on the ATNF/Radiophysics/AAO grounds. All are welcome to these discussions.

Forthcoming AAO colloquia....

AAO Colloquia


Friday 19th June 2009 3:30pm

AAO Colloquium

Spitzer LVL Luminosity- and Mass-Metallicity Relations for Star-Forming Dwarf Galaxies in the Local Volume

Henry Lee, Gemini Observatory

Abstract:
Galaxy mass-metallicity (M-Z) relations provide important diagnostics to evaluate galaxy evolution over a wide range in masses to help discriminate among various models for the histories of galaxy assembly. While a variety of observational and theoretical studies have focused on M-Z relations for nearby and distant massive galaxies, the shapes of these relations can be anchored by similar M-Z relations for dwarf galaxies in the nearby universe, which provide "zero-points" at low-mass and low-redshift. The Spitzer Local Volume Legacy (LVL) survey has gathered homogeneous near- and mid-infrared fluxes of 258 galaxies in a volume-complete sample within 11 Mpc. For a subsample of 50 star-forming dwarf galaxies with well-measured gas-phase metallicities, we construct and examine optical and near-infrared luminosity-metallicity (L-Z) relations. We show that the slope of the L-Z relation varies little from the optical to near-infrared wavelengths, and the dispersion generally decreases with increasing wavelength. With a prescription to compute stellar masses, the resulting M-Z relation has slope consistent with predictions, although the slope is shallower than the slope for the relation derived for more massive galaxies. With their measured gas contents, dwarf galaxies follow chemical evolution tracks with effective yields in the range between 10 and 80% of the solar value, which suggests that dwarf galaxies experience some but not complete loss of their metals.


 

2009: Recent and Future AAO Colloquia

2009: Recent and Future AAO Colloquia
Date Venue & Time  Speaker Title
8th January 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Eike Guenther, Thuringa, Germany Searching for extra-solar planets with CoRoT
14th January 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Berian James, ROE, Scotland, UK Structure Large and Small in the Clustering of Galaxies
21st January 2009 Joint ATNF/AAO Colloquium: ATNF Lecture Theatre 3:30 p.m. Simon Driver, St.Andrews, Scotland, UK Modeling the total energy output of the nearby UniverseFlo
28th January 2009 Joint ATNF/AAO Colloquium: ATNF Lecture Theatre 3:30 p.m. Leslie Sage, Senior Editor, Nature How to publish a paper in Nature
9th March 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. David Floyd, Las Campanas, Chile Examining quasar accretion discs through microlensing
18th March 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Caroline Foster, Swinburne Metallicity Gradients at Large Galactocentric Radii Using the NIR Calcium Triplet
25th March 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Aaron Robotham, St.Andrews The progress, stress and future success of GAMA
26th March 2009 MQ theatre E6A 102 11:00am Andreas Kelz, AIP, Potsdam, Germany Developments in 3D- and Fiber-spectroscopy at the AIP
2nd April 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Mario Mateo, Michigan, USA Examining quasar accretion discs through microlensing
3rd April 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Jon Loveday, Sussex, UK Colour and luminosity-dependence of galaxy clustering
15th June 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Brent Miszalski, Macquarie University/Strasbourg Planetary Nebulae in our Galaxy and the binary hypothesis
19th June 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Henry Lee, Gemini Observatory Spitzer LVL Luminosity- and Mass-Metallicity Relations for Star-Forming Dwarf Galaxies in the Local Volume
9th July 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Rob Sharp, AAO The interstellar medium in the laboratory
27th August 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Quentin Parker, Macquarie/AAO Space to Grow. The ARC Faulkes Telescope Linkage project: Engaging high schools students in science using the hook of astronomy
17th September 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Stuart Ryder, Gemini Office, AAO Supernovae as revealed by Gemini
17th July 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Peter Barnes, Univ Florida TBA
18th November 2009 AAO Conference room 3:30 p.m. Dominique Proust, The attractive Shapley Supercluster of galaxies and its attraction with the Local Supercluster

AAO Conferences

Current and Past meetings


An international workshop in honour of Agnes Acker: Legacies of the Macquarie/AAO/Strasbourg H-alpha Planetary Nebula project; February 16-18th 2009, Sydney, Australia, organised by Macquarie University and the Anglo-Australian Observatory.

Major Topics Covered: PN Surveys, the Galactic distance scale and PN luminosity functions in our Galaxy, the Magellanic clouds and beyond


Quentin Parker, AAO/Macquarie Unviversity - last updated 6/03/09