Astronomy Journal Club

On Wednesday mornings, once a fortnight, we meet at 11:30 (unless otherwise stated) for a journal club. The location for each meeting will be announced beforehand.

Attendees bring interesting papers, and a brief introduction is given to the Journal Club. Each paper presentation is then followed by discussion. The entire event should take one hour. The papers could be anything published in the last year in astrophysics, related science and relevant to astronomy.

We encourage MSSL astronomers and astrophysicists to come to Journal Club for a discussion on recent research. Please contact Denis González-Caniulef with suggested papers, or for other JC queries. Links to suggested and discussed papers will be added below.

Calendar 2017
Date	Title
11 Jan Stable Block - Common Room	NASA Selects Mission to Study Black Holes, Cosmic X-ray Mysteries : NASA article CTA's Galactic Plane Survey Will Provide Unprecedented View of Our Galaxy : CTA article Hidden Secrets of Orion's Clouds: ESO article LIGO black hole echoes hint at general-relativity breakdown: Nature article A direct localization of a fast radio burst and its host (S. Chatterjee et al, 2017, Nature Nature paper)
25 Jan Stable Block - Common Room	VLT to Search for Planets in Alpha Centauri System : ESO article Observations hint at a new recipe for giant black holes : SCIENCE article Hubble Captures 'Shadow Play' Caused by Possible Planet : NASA article A test for skewed distributions of dark matter and a detection in galaxy cluster Abell 3827 (P. Taylor et al., 2017, arxiv.org/1701.04412) Fast Radio Bursts from Extragalactic Light Sails (M. Lingam and A. Loeb, 2017, arxiv.org/1701.01109) The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Target Selection of Nearby Stars and Galaxies (H. Isaacson et al., 2017, arxiv.org/1701.06227)
8 Feb Stable Block - Common Room	The Universe Is Expanding Faster Than Expected : article Faint, distant galaxies may have driven early universe makeover : ScienceNews Researchers add a splash of human intuition to planning algorithms : MIT news Primes without 7s : article Variable interstellar radiation fields in simulated dwarf galaxies: supernovae versus photoelectric heating (Hu et al., 2017, arxiv.org/1701.08779) Not so lumpy after all: modeling the depletion of dark matter subhalos by Milky Way-like galaxies (Garrison-Kimmel et al., 2017, arxiv.org/1701.03792 )
22 Feb Stable Block - Common Room	LIGO's underdog cousin ready to enhance gravitational-wave hunt: Nature article A middleweight black hole is hiding at the center of a giant star cluster: Phys.org The Brightest, Furthest Pulsar in the Universe : ESA article Hubble Space Telescope detection of the millisecond pulsar J2124-3358 and its far-ultraviolet bow shock nebula (Rangelov et al., 2017, arxiv.org/1701.00002) The peculiar light-curve of J1415+1320: A case study in extreme scattering events (Vedantham et al., 2017, arxiv.org/1702.05519 )
8 March Stable Block - Common Room	Scientists Are About to Switch on a Telescope That Could Photograph a Black Hole's Event Horizon : ScienceAlert Neural networks promise sharpest ever images : ScienceDaily Scientists find evidence for light-by-light scattering, long standing prediction of the Standard Model : Phys.org Offsets between member galaxies and dark matter in clusters: a test with the Illustris simulation (Karen Y. Ng et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1703.00010 ) Limits on the Mass and Abundance of Primordial Black Holes from Quasar Gravitational Microlensing (Mediavilla et al. 2017, ApJL )
22 March NA	XXVII Elizabeth Spreadbury Lecture: "Cosmology beyond the standard model" by Prof. Subir Sarkar link to the event
5 April Stable Block - Common Room	Hubble Dates Black Hole's Last Big Meal : NASA article It's not just you: science papers are getting harder to read : Nature article A detection of wobbling Brightest Cluster Galaxies within massive galaxy clusters (Harvey et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1703.07365) Strongly baryon-dominated disk galaxies at the peak of galaxy formation ten billion years ago (Genzel et al. 2017, Nature Letter )
19 April NA	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Easter Break ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3 May Stable Block - Common Room	Atmosphere around super-Earth detected : Phys.org Formation of the first three gravitational-wave observations through isolated binary evolution (Stevenson et al. 2017, Nature communications )
17 May Stable Block - Common Room	Winnig plans for CubeSats to the moon : ESA article The Harmony That Keeps Trappist-1's 7 Earth-size Worlds From Colliding : NYT article The surprisingly large dust and gas content of quiescent galaxies at z>1.4 (Gobat et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1703.02207v1) Reconstructing the gravitational field of the local universe (Desmond et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1705.02420v1)
31 May Stable Block - Common Room	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cancelled ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
14 June Stable Block - Common Room	NASA to Launch First-Ever Neutron-Star Mission : NASA article Collapsing star gives birth to a black hole : phy.org The age-metallicity structure of the Milky Way disk (Mackereth et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1706.00018v1 ) Knowledge discovery through text-based similarity searches for astronomy literature (Kerzendorf 2017, arxiv.org/1705.05840 ) The structural evolution of galaxies with both thin and thick discs (Aumer and Binney, 2017 arxiv.org/1705.09240v1 )
28 June Stable Block - Common Room	The Missing Link: Where Are Medium-Size Black Holes? : space.com Massive, 'Dead' Galaxy Puzzles Astronomers : discover.com Thinking Big: NASA's plans to guard Mars's atmosphere with a magnetic shield signals our first step to terraforming hostile environments : pionic.com Quasar UV luminosity function evolution up to z=8 (Manti et al. 2016 MNRAS ) The association of GRB 060218 with a supernova and the evolution of the shock wave (Campana et al. 2006 Nature letter ) Jet or shock breakout? The low-luminosity GRB 060218 (Irwin and Chevalier, 2016 MNRAS ) Shining Light on Quantum Gravity with Pulsar-Black hole Binaries (Estes et al. 2017 ApJ )
12 July Stable Block - Common Room	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cancelled ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
26 July Stable Block - Common Room	More to life than the habitable zone : phys.org Groundbreaking discovery confirms existence of orbiting supermassive black holes : phys.org How the huge energy of quantum vacuum gravitates to drive the slow accelerating expansion of the Universe (Wang et al. 2017 Phys. Rev. D )
August NA	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Summer break ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
20 September Stable Block - Common Room	Accretion-powered pulsar reveals unique timing glitch : RAS News & Press Galactic wind X-ray heating of the intergalactic medium during the Epoch of Reionization (Meiksin et al. 2017 arxiv.org/1708.07341 ) Dark matter dynamics in Abell 3827: new data consistent with standard Cold Dark Matter (Massey et al. 2017 arxiv.org/1708.04245v1) Impact and mitigation strategy for future solar flares (Lingam and Loeb 2017 arxiv.org/1709.05348v2
4 October Stable Block - Common Room	Gravitational wave detection wins physics Nobel : Nature News European detector spots its first gravitational wave : Nature News Disk Heating, Galactoseismology, and the Formation of Stellar Halos (Johnston et al. 2017 arxiv.org/1709.00491v1) Cresting the wave: Proper motions of the Eastern Banded Structure (Deason et al. 2017 arxiv.org/1709.08633v1 ) The Hercules stream as seen by APOGEE-2 South (Hunt et al. 2017 arxiv.org/1709.02807v1 )
18 October Stable Block - Common Room	Catching the first light from a gravitational wave event : UCL news GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral (LIGO and Virgo Collaboration 2017 arxiv.org/1710.05832v1 ) The environment of the binary neutron star merger GW170817 (Levan et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1710.05444v1 ) A Deep Chandra X-ray Study of Neutron Star Coalescence GW170817 (Haggard et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1710.05852v1 ) Origin of the heavy elements in binary neutron-star mergers from a gravitational wave event (Kasen et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1710.05463v1 ) The Origin of r-Process Elements in the Milky Way (Cote et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1710.05875v1 ) Search for Dark Matter Effects on Gravitational Signals from Neutron Star Mergers (Ellis et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1710.05540v1 )
1 November Stable Block - Common Room	Illuminating Gravitational Waves: A Concordant Picture of Photons from a Neutron Star Merger (Kasliwal et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1710.05436v1 ) Swift and NuSTAR observations of GW170817: detection of a blue kilonova (Evans et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1710.05437v1 ) Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger (Abbot et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1710.05833v2 )
15 November Libray	Old but still warm: Far-UV detection of PSR B0950+08 (Pavlov et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1710.06448v1 ) Atomic Interferometric Gravitational-wave Space Observatory (AIGSO) (Gao et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1711.03690v1 ) Using LISA-like Gravitational Wave Detectors to Search for Primordial Black Holes (Guo et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1709.03500v1 ) Fourteen candidate RR Lyrae star streams in the inner Galaxy (Mateu et al. 2017, arxiv.org/1711.03967v1 )
29 November Common Room	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cancelled ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
13 December Common Room	Bizarre shape of interstellar asteroid : BBC news Testing the strong equivalence principle with gravitational-wave observations of binary black holes (Barausse 2017, arxiv.org/1703.05699)

Journal club schedules in other years: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018.