"Galaxies, The Building Blocks of our Universe" talk by Felipe Menanteau, Rutgers UniversityMay 7, 2009 at 7:30–9 p.m.

Dr. Felipe Menanteau of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers University will speak on "Galaxies, The Building Blocks of Our Universe". This talk is funded, in part, by the Harlow Shapley Visiting Lectureship Program of the American Astronomical Society.

The abstract for his talk is below:
A Holy Grail of modern astronomy is understanding the origin of Edwin Hubble's morphological sequence of galaxy types. What made some collapsing gas clouds turn into elegant spiral systems like our own Milky Way whereas others became smooth featureless ellipticals? And more fundamentally, do their appearance offer any insight into their physical origin? In the late 1990s the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) gave us a first glimpse of galaxies in the distant Universe and hinted at some of the preferred morphologies of faraway galaxies. Moreover, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on HST, since its installation in March 2002 until its failure in late 2006, provided the most spectacular galaxy images in the distant universe, with unparalleled depth and resolution enabling morphological studies of ever bigger samples of galaxies at larger look-back times. On May 12, 2009 astronauts on the Space Shuttle Atlantis will make the final trip to HST, they will repair ACS and install two new instruments. In this lecture I will review the progress we have made in recent years in our understanding of the how and when of galaxy formation using the superb resolving power of HST and ACS to study galaxies when the Universe was around half its current age.