Astronomy and Astrophysics Seminars

High-mass star formation: new observational insights

by Dr. M. S. Nanda Kumar (Centro de Astrofisica Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal.)

Tuesday, February 13, 2018 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at DAA SEMINAR ( A269 )
TIFR
Description

While the hunt for disks around high-mass stars continues in the ALMA era, other interesting predictions of high-mass star formation theories remain untested. Dense accretion flows leading to the formation of the highest mass stars can become Jeans unstable, producing a near-equal mass binary. This can explain the near-equal mass binarity well-known in field massive stars. I will show high-angular resolution observations (VLT and ALMA) of two such systems in formation. Young high-mass stars are also expected to be bloated, with radii up to 400Rsun, because of high internal entropy. I will present new infrared observations supporting this hypothesis. Finally, I will present a new systematic search and discovery of infrared variability in a large sample of young massive stars.