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“Shedding Infrared Light on Different Star-forming Environments” Dr. Grace Wolf-Chase Adler Planetarium/University of Chicago |
| The paradigm for the formation of isolated, low-mass stars is reasonably well established, but most stars form in clusters. This is particularly true for massive stars, which can significantly affect their birth environments and their "sibling" stars. Indeed, it is currently thought that our Solar System formed in the presence of massive stars, which may have both triggered the initial collapse and subsequently enriched the protoplanetary disk with isotopes formed in the explosion of a nearby supernova. Given the influence of massive stars on their environments, a better understanding of the phases of massive star and cluster formation is sorely needed in order to understand the distributions of stars and the variety of extrasolar planetary systems. My talk will focus on the early stages of protostellar evolution. I will review the standard paradigm for the birth of an isolated, low-mass star and present recent Spitzer Space Telescope observations, which are shedding new light on the "anatomy" and physical conditions in one of the nearest protostars. I will then examine complications arising from the fact that most stars form in clusters, and describe current efforts to identify the elusive "High-Mass Protostellar Object". An outstanding question in the formation of high-mass stars is whether they form via accretion through a disk, similar to low-mass stars, or via coalescence of lower-mass stars or protostellar objects. Since disk accretion is closely connected with well-collimated jets and outflows, I will describe a survey we are conducting utilizing the NICFPS instrument at the APO 3.5-m telescope to identify jets associated with outflows in massive star forming regions. |