What Shuts Down Star Formation in Galaxies?

Colloquium: Astronomy Colloquia | February 14 | 4-5 p.m. | 1 LeConte Hall

Speaker/Performer: Alison Coil, UCSD

Sponsor: Department of Astronomy

The main question I will address in my talk is what shuts down star formation in galaxies. I will highlight recent observational work on outflowing galactic-scale winds in post-starburst and AGN host galaxies and the potential impact of these winds on star formation in these galaxies. I will present new work on which galaxies host accreting supermassive black holes and the lack of evidence for these black holes impacting their host galaxies. Finally, I will show what galaxies look like when their star formation is being shut down and what we can learn from the morphological transformations they undergo during this process. At the end I will briefly mention a new Keck survey that several UC faculty members, including myself and your own Mariska Kriek, are leading to study even more distant galaxies with large, statistical samples.

Event Contact: rhelgens@astro.berkeley.edu, 510-642-5275