Andrew Cooper visited from Durham. He showed us a cutting-edge simulation of galaxy formation. It was impressive to see how distributions of in-situ and accreating stars are different in each halo mass. Thanks Andrew!  Please come back again!

Kevin's Travel in Winter Vacation

 Kevin went to Hokkaido for a tour during the winter vacation. He has experienced the "real" winter which the temperature is about -5~0 degree Celsius. (Comparing with Taiwan's 15~20) 

"A walk" with skiing equipment. 

Looking at the lovely penguins so close!

Bye, New Chitose Airport.

Bye, Hokkaido. 

First Day Dinner in PSROC

People from NTHUIOA was having delicious dinner  together at the first night of PSROC.

Kevin, Yihan, and Tetsuya reported their results at PSROC meeting in 淡水。Great job!

Allison Man's Talk

Allison Man visited NTHU on 3rd January.
Allison is an ESO fellow, she studies evolution of massive galaxies.

Massive galaxies have 10^11 Msun at z=2 and 2x10^11 Msun at z=0, SFR < 10 and today they are ellipticals; but in the past they were something else.
Allison talked about the possible mechanisms that can explain early quenching in massive galaxies.
These are: 1) AGN feedback, 2) Halo quenching, 3) Morphological quenching.
Recent observations suggest that morphological quenching is not favourable anymore.

Yihan gave a nice talk at the Dark energy conference at NCTS. A great job, Yihan!

Astro-ph Today

(1)
Tomo-san introduced a paper concerning the possibility of a quasar as a standard candle. Standard
candles are a useful tool in astronomy since we can use them to estimate the distances of celestial objects and even use them to explore the expansion of the Universe.  It has been and interesting issue in astronomy.

(2)
Jimmy introduced the Green Bank Telescope and its current state. If anyone intend to conduct an observation with the telescope, it may be a good choice to apply for.

(3)
Kevin presented a paper concerning AGNs and Reionization of the Universe. A model was discussed  that an AGN-dominated scenario will satisfy the some observational constrains and considered that AGNs may mainly contribute during the epoch of reionization than the active star-forming galaxies.