How do show something that's invisible? How can we view, model and understand those parts of our universe which are beyond the scope of our senses? How can we use a grad's students unwavering desire for pizza to explain our galaxies inexorable gas guzzling?
Yong Zheng took us on a journey from waking up and rifling through the fridge to building a massive galaxy by throwing swirling disks of stars and gas together. With delightful hand drawn cartoons and a many laughs she showed us that there's much more to the Milky Way than meets the eye, and by examining electromagnetic waves way out of the spectrum our eyes can see we can infer the private life of gas streaming in and out of galaxies. Culminating in beautiful films from the Illustris simulation she invited us to consider what interesting and varied information may be hidden just out of sight.
Afterwards Stephanie Douglas, gave a short talk on how clusters of stars passing near the milky way are ripped apart into long thin streams that we see cutting across the night's sky. Our 3D wall was showing off everything beautiful movies on topics ranging from the surface of our sun to collisions between galaxies. Patchy clouds and technical issues made observing tricky, but those who persevered were able to peer at the Orion Nebula and Jupiter using portable telescopes on campus. The roof was also open for tours but sadly conditions made it impossible to view the sky through it.
-- Zephyr Penoyre (graduate student)