Kelly Denney - The AGN Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project
Several members of the department are involved in a monumental reverberation mapping project (PI - B.M. Peterson) that consisted of ~170 HST/COS orbits and >1000 supporting SWIFT and ground-based observations across the UV/optical wavelength range. This project represents the most detailed (in terms of combined wavelength and temporal coverage) study of reverberation mapping of a single target, namely, NGC 5548, a nearby Seyfert 1 galaxy. While I am not the primary person completing any part of the analysis of this project, I thought this would nonetheless be a good opportunity to present locally the program and initial results that have been completed by many members of the OSU astronomy community and other collaborators from the STORM Project.
Kevin Croxall - Far-IR temperature-insensitive metallicity diagnostics
With the advent of the latest generation of NIR spectrographs, new diagnostics of the physical properties of high-redshift galaxies have now become attainable. These instruments have facilitated high-quality measurement of multiple nebular emission lines for 100s of high-z galaxies. The first results from large surveys have shown there to be important discrepancies between the physical conditions and abundance patterns within high-z and local star-forming galaxies. In light of these new observations, a more sophisticated understanding of massive stellar evolution and photoionization modeling is required to interpret the data in a physically meaningful manner. I will discuss the use and usefulness of the FIR fine-structure lines in understanding the abundance patterns and physical conditions of ionized gas in local galaxies. Additionally, I will discuss their use in high-z star forming galaxies.
