New Horizons in Astronomy 2011
The fourth New Horizons in Astronomy (popularly known as "BashFest") was held October 9-11 in the ACES Building on the University of Texas campus.
Made possible through generous support of the Board of Visitors, BashFest brought together postdoctoral researchers and graduate students to discuss their research on a wide range of astronomical topics in talks and posters.
Highlights of the talks include:
Michel Nuevo of the SETI Institute and the NASA Ames Research Center spoke on Laboratory Astrochemistry , where he discussed his research into ices and organic compounds discovered in meteorites and the interstellar medium. He explained how these compounds inform our understanding of the building blocks and formation of life on Earth.
Elizabeth Jeffery, graduate of UT Austin and now at James Madison University in
Virginia, discussed The Late Stages of Stellar Evolution or " Hubble’s Diamonds:
A Stellar Way to Go Out" . Concentrating on white dwarf stars, she gave an overview the discovery of white dwarfs and their usefulness in modern astrophysics including neutrino research and determining the ages and evolution of star clusters.
In her talk Big Game Hunting (Or Multi-Object Spectroscopy for the Next
Decade) , Sarah Tuttle, a postdoctoral fellow at UT, updated attendees on the status of the next generation of very large telescopes and instruments including
HETDEX and the Giant Magellan Telescope.
Annika Peter of UC Irvine spoke on Dark Matter and how everything we currently know of its nature comes from astronomy. Particle-physics experiments have not identified what dark matter is, so she advocated a return to using astronomical observations in the search.
Fritz Benedict of University of Texas at Austin gave a talk at the conference banquet on A Strange, Long Wandering and how to use humor and enthusiasm to tell the world about astronomy.
Other presentations were:
* Simon Albrecht, MIT: Exoplanets
* Mustafa Amin, MIT: Inflation and Its End
* Kristian Finlator, UC Santa Barbara: Reionization

* Eilat Glikman, Yale: The Reddest Quasars: A Transitional Phase in
Quasar/Galaxy Co-Evolution
* Meredith Hughes, UC Berkeley: Protoplanetary Disks and Planet Formation
* Mike Kesden, New York University: Black Hole Mergers
* Patrick Lenz, Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center: Asteroseismology of
Main-Sequence Stars
* Matt Povich, Penn State: Beyond Strömgren Spheres and Wind-Blown
Bubbles: An Observational Perspective on H II Region Feedback
* Kevin Schawinski, Yale: Galaxy Black Hole Co-Evolution?
* Stephanie Tonnesen, Princeton: Galaxy Evolution in Clusters
* John Wise, Princeton: First Light by Laura Eakins