Place: 4421 Sterling Hall, Coffee and cookies 3:30 PM, Talk begins 3:45 PM
Speaker: Bill Wolf, UW Eau Claire
Abstract: Novae are the result of thermonuclear flashes on the surfaces of hydrogen-accreting white dwarfs. With peak luminosities in the hundreds of thousands of solar luminosities and roughly fifty detected in M31 each year, novae comprise a well-observed class of stellar transients from radio to X-ray. I will review the current understanding of nova evolution and highlight successes we have had in modeling the post-outburst phase of evolution to connect observable quantities to white dwarf parameters. I will close by introducing the lingering puzzle of observed oscillations in the post-outburst phase and our attempts to explain it.