Image of Alice in Wonderland at the Mad Hatter's tea party You are cordially invited to afternoon tea and biscuits wine and chocolate

Astronomy Tea Talks at Caltech

Mondays, Hameetman auditorium (Cahill)
Tea:  4.00pm
Talk: 4.15pm

Organized by:

2010 - 2011 season:
28 March 2011 Nairn Baliber (CIT)

'Pre-Main Sequence Stellar Rotation and Star-Disk Interaction'

Strong magnetic activity in pre-main-sequence stars creates large surface features that cause measurable intensity modulations as these features rotate across the visible disk of a star. Thousands of measurements have shown a strong dependence of rotation rate on stellar mass. Combined with Spitzer mid-IR data as a disk indicator, they also provide a strong suggestion that interaction with a circumstellar disk can slow or prevent the spin-up of young stars as they contract onto the main sequence. I will summarize observational evidence for the effects of star-disk interaction on rotation rates in the Orion Nebula Cluster and NGC 2264, and discuss numerical simulations analyzing those results. I will then present recent observations of IC 348 that, for the first time, include disk information for the entire sample of rotators in a young cluster. These results shed new light on the relationships between rotation rate, stellar mass, and star-disk interaction, which might lead to a better understanding of the internal structure of pre-main-sequence stars.
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Last modified on 20th Jul 2011 by Dominik A. Riechers.  

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