Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at 4:35pm to 5:45pm
Wright Lecture Hall, W201
110 North Professor Street, Oberlin, OH 44074
Dr. Will Fischer, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Toledo, will present a talk entitled "Revealing the Hunter's Secrets with HOPS, the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey."
Abstract: In the last twenty years, hundreds of planets have been discovered beyond our own solar system. Determining how these planets and their host stars formed is one of the primary goals of astronomy. We can make progress by observing the ongoing formation of sunlike stars elsewhere in our galaxy. In the first stage of star formation, a dense clump of molecular gas begins to collapse under its own gravity. This infalling envelope forms a disk, which feeds gas to a growing central star over a span of about two million years. Eventually the disk disperses, leaving a system of planets. Dr. Fischer will show how our program HOPS, the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey, is using data from the Herschel, Spitzer, WISE, and Hubble space telescopes along with a suite of ground-based observatories to understand star formation in the Orion molecular clouds, the most active star-forming region in the nearest 1,500 light years.
A reception for Dr. Fischer will begin at 4:10 p.m. in the Anderson Lounge area -- Wright Physics Laboratory, second floor.
Diane Doman
440-775-5205
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