Virtual meeting via Zoom and livestreamed on YouTube.
Featured speaker: Joleen Carlberg, Space Telescope Science Institute
A Window into the Ultraviolet Universe with Hubble
Signon begins at 7pm; meeting agenda begins 7:30pm
Currently, the Hubble Space Telescope is our only window for observing the cosmos across ultraviolet wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. These relatively energetic wavelengths of light can offer unique probes into a wide array of astrophysical phenomena. Like optical and infrared light, ultraviolet photons can be collected by traditional telescope optical designs, but like X-ray and other higher energy photons, they can also be individually counted. In this presentation, you will learn about some of the technology enabling the study of the ultraviolet universe as well as a diverse sampling of some of the science cases: from the aurora of gas giant planets, through the detection of the faintest chemical signatures in the earliest generations of stars, to the violent destruction of stars by supermassive black holes.
Joleen Carlberg joined the institute in 2016 as a Support Scientist on the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) team. Her focus on the team is monitoring and improving the calibration of the STIS spectral modes, particularly in tracking sensitivity changes of all the spectral gratings and addressing specific calibration issues for the echelle gratings. She recently assumed the role of User Support Lead, where she oversees the interactions the STIS team has with the community in support of planning their HST observations.
Before joining the institute, Dr. Carlberg was a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and a Vera Rubin Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. She is interested in the red giant phase of stellar evolution and its consequences on exoplanetary systems. Much of her observational work is studying red giants with unusual properties, in search of evidence of the tidal engulfment of planets by their host stars. She is active in the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) survey as part of the team conducting a search for substellar companions to red giant stars and has also been contributing to the development of the Milky Way Mapper survey in SDSS-V.