Research Seminars @ Illinois

View Full Calendar

Tailored for undergraduate researchers, this calendar is a curated list of research seminars at the University of Illinois. Explore the diverse world of research and expand your knowledge through engaging sessions designed to inspire and enlighten.

To have your events added or removed from this calendar, please contact OUR at ugresearch@illinois.edu

Icko Iben Jr. Series: The Fates of Stars Orbiting too Close to Massive Black Holes

Event Type: Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor: Department of Astronomy
Location: NCSA Auditorium
Virtual: Join online
Date: Oct 28, 2025 3:45 - 4:45 pm
Speaker: Professor Eliot Quataert
Contact: Daniel Franco
E-Mail: danielf9@illinois.edu
Phone: 217-300-6769
Views: 2
Originating Calendar: Astronomy Colloquium Speaker Calendar; Stars orbiting sufficiently close to massive black holes inevitably inspiral towards the black hole due to gravitational wave radiation. The fate of such stars is subtle and depends on an interplay between tidal heating of the star, mass transfer from the star to the black hole, and collisions between the star and any ambient accretion disk. In this talk, I will describe the possible fates of stars on such orbits and their connection to enigmatic classes of recently discovered recurring transients in galactic nuclei, including partial tidal disruption events and quasi-periodic eruptions. I will also discuss the connection between inspiraling stars and other stellar dynamical processes in galactic nuclei, e.g., the orbiting stars observed in the Galactic Center, extreme mass ratio inspirals of compact objects observable by LISA, hyper-velocity stars, and tidal disruption events.

link for robots only