General Meeting 7:31 p.m.
Lecture 8:20 p.m.
Astronomy Classroom, 2nd Level, Spees Building
Chabot Space & Science Center, 10000 Skyline Boulevard, Oakland, California
We shouldn't take
the Universe for granted - our planet and home star haven't always been
here. The oldest stars in our galaxy are about 13 billion years old, while
the Sun and the rest of the solar system formed only about 5 billion years
ago. Since the Sun and planets formed much later than the earliest stars,
could stars like the sun and planets like the Earth still be forming today?
Observing them now can give us clues as to how our own solar system formed.
Stars like the sun form in dusty clouds of gas that are opaque to visible
light, so they have been difficult to observe with traditional photographic
plates and CCD cameras. However, infrared detector array technology has
grown tremendously over the past couple of decades, allowing unprecedented
sensitive observations of young stars still forming in their dusty cocoons.
When combined with modern star formation theories, infrared observations
from spacecraft and ground-based telescopes have recently revealed unprecedented
details about the physical properties of young stars and their pre-planet-forming
circumstellar disks. In particular, infrared spectra are now yielding some
of the most sought-after details of young stars and their evolutionary
processes. I will describe this progression of knowledge, including sharing
some of my recent observations with the Keck and other large telescopes.