The Early Lives of Sun-Like Stars

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Speaker(s): Ann Esin

The study of star formation is currently one of the mostactive areas of astrophysics, partly due to its connection with theorigin of planetary systems. Because young proto-stars tend to beheavily embedded in gas and dust clouds, detailed imaging of theseobjects during early critical stages of evolution is very difficult,which makes testing theoretical models of stellar formationproblematic. Fortunately, several properties of young stars, as theyemerge into visibility, carry a lot of information about their earlyevolution. Of particular importance is stellar rotational period,since it provides us with clues about the angular momentum evolutionof a proto-star, which is the key to understanding star formation. Iwill discuss how these periods can be measured and what the observedperiod distributions tell us about the early lives of stars.

Colloquium

Junior and senior physics majors attend our biweekly colloquium series, held on Tuesday afternoons at 4:30 p.m. in Shanahan B460. The talks are open to all students and to the public, and are frequently attended by scientists from the other Claremont Colleges, Cal Poly Pomona, and others. The series features speakers from a broad range of institutions and fields of physics.