250 — 10 October 2013 Editor: Bo Reipurth ([email protected]) List of Contents
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THE STAR FORMATION NEWSLETTER An electronic publication dedicated to early stellar/planetary evolution and molecular clouds No. 250 — 10 October 2013 Editor: Bo Reipurth ([email protected]) List of Contents The Star Formation Newsletter Interview ...................................... 3 My Favorite Object ............................ 5 Editor: Bo Reipurth [email protected] Perspective .................................... 9 Technical Editor: Eli Bressert Abstracts of Newly Accepted Papers .......... 13 [email protected] Abstracts of Newly Accepted Major Reviews . 51 Technical Assistant: Hsi-Wei Yen Dissertation Abstracts ........................ 52 [email protected] New Jobs ..................................... 54 Editorial Board Meetings ..................................... 57 Summary of Upcoming Meetings ............. 59 Joao Alves Alan Boss Short Announcements ........................ 60 Jerome Bouvier Lee Hartmann Thomas Henning Paul Ho Cover Picture Jes Jorgensen Charles J. Lada The image shows the reflection nebula NGC 7129 Thijs Kouwenhoven located in the Cepheus Flare at a distance of ap- Michael R. Meyer proximately 1250 pc and illuminated by three B- Ralph Pudritz stars. The Herbig Ae/Be star LkHα 234 is the Luis Felipe Rodr´ıguez bright nebulous star partly embedded in the cav- Ewine van Dishoeck ity rim (left of center). The main illuminators of Hans Zinnecker the reflection nebula are the two young B-stars BD+65◦1637 and BD+65◦1638 located inside the The Star Formation Newsletter is a vehicle for cavity (middle of figure). Numerous red Herbig- fast distribution of information of interest for as- Haro objects are seen, particularly the bright bow- tronomers working on star and planet formation shaped HH 103 (near the lower right edge). The and molecular clouds. You can submit material region is rich in low-mass pre-main sequence stars, for the following sections: Abstracts of recently radio continuum sources, and water masers. The B- accepted papers (only for papers sent to refereed stars have blown a cavity in a dense molecular cloud journals), Abstracts of recently accepted major re- about 11 pc in extent. Two molecular outflows are views (not standard conference contributions), Dis- associated with LkHα 234 and an embedded far- sertation Abstracts (presenting abstracts of new infrared source FIRS 2. Ph.D dissertations), Meetings (announcing meet- Image courtesy Johannes Schedler ings broadly of interest to the star and planet for- http://panther-observatory.com mation and early solar system community), New Jobs (advertising jobs specifically aimed towards persons within the areas of the Newsletter), and Short Announcements (where you can inform or re- quest information from the community). Addition- Submitting your abstracts ally, the Newsletter brings short overview articles on objects of special interest, physical processes or Latex macros for submitting abstracts theoretical results, the early solar system, as well and dissertation abstracts (by e-mail to as occasional interviews. [email protected]) are appended to each Call for Abstracts. You can also submit via the Newsletter Archive Newsletter web interface at http://www2.ifa. www.ifa.hawaii.edu/users/reipurth/newsletter.htm hawaii.edu/star-formation/index.cfm 2 46/47 outflow. What was the genesis of that paper? John Graham A: At that time, I was on the staff of Cerro Tololo Inter- American Observatory and Bok was coming to Chile on in conversation with Bo Reipurth observing visits. He had renewed his old interest in star formation within dark globules and had obtained a photo- graph of the HH46/47 outflow with the 4-meter telescope there. He was enthusiastic that others should follow up with spectroscopy and infrared photometry to identify the embedded source and to study the outflow. Q: Another very influential paper was your study with Jay Frogel on the new FUor associated with HH 57, and now known as V346 Nor. What is the story behind this discov- ery? A: Every researcher brings his or her own particular ex- pertise to the table. Mine was that I knew the southern skies unusually well and was very aware of any changes that might be taking place. I was familiar with the earlier work of Martin Cohen and Richard Schwartz in survey- Q: Your career started out in Australia where you studied ing areas of recent star formation and one night observing galactic structure. Was this motivated by Bart Bok, who HH 57 I noticed a star-like object that had not been there was the grand old man in that subject in those days? before, in the corner of the HH object. Subsequent com- A: It is important for all young scientists to have a men- munication with Schwartz confirmed that it had not been tor and I was lucky to come of age when Bart Bok had there when he last looked at it. just arrived in Australia as Director of the Mount Stromlo Q: You have documented how reflection nebulae around Observatory. Bart was an amazing character who com- some very young stars vary due to shadowing effects from bined great human warmth with a single-minded passion clouds moving around the stars, probably closer than 1 for his chosen science. Research into the structure of the AU. And you deduced spectroscopically that accretion onto Southern Milky Way was in its infancy at that time and it young stars is clumpy was a ripe field in which to get involved. My own doctoral A: This concerned the reflection nebula associated with research concerned using new distances for young O and the pre-main sequence star R CrA. Almost 100 years ago, early B type stars, some in clusters, some in the field, to Harold Knox-Shaw and Edwin Hubble had observed changes map Galactic spiral structure. in the morphology of the nebula taking place over several Q: Why did you move from Australia to The Netherlands? nights. Hubble correctly deduced that the phenomenon A: I went via South Africa. At the time of my graduation, was due to ’a wave of illumination’ sweeping across struc- the Leiden Observatory was unable to find an astronomer tures in the reflection nebula. I had the advantage of being to staff its southern observing station near Pretoria. The on the scientific staff of an observatory that provided ac- Director, Jan Oort, spoke to Bok, who suggested me as a cess to telescopes on sequential nights and could respond candidate. I took my PhD oral exam there at the Radcliffe to unexpected events at very short notice. Thanks to the Observatory from David Thackeray, who was another of newly available CCD detectors, I was able to image the R my mentors; a personality very different from Bok but CrA reflection nebula on several nights and could docu- who was a person equally passionate about his research. ment changes that could only be due to shadowing effects After a year in South Africa, I joined the staff at Leiden from partially opaque dust clouds very close to the star. but after a year was attracted to the Kitt Peak National The clumpy nature of the circumstellar material could Observatory by David Crawford, who was then in charge also be detected spectroscopically through night-to-night of building the 4-meter Mayall telescope. Kitt Peak was a changes in line intensities. Unfortunately, I was never able great place for a young astronomer in the 1960s because so to correlate the two phenomena. many renowned astronomers passed though there to use Q: Your most cited paper has nothing directly to do with the facilities. star formation, but deals with UBVRI standard stars in Q: You were among the pioneers in the early study of the E-regions. What motivated that study? Herbig-Haro objects and have published numerous papers A: I undertook that work because of the lack of faint pho- on the subject. I particularly remember your paper with tometric standard stars in the southern hemisphere and I Jay Elias from 1983 on the Bok globule harboring the HH needed them for my study of the Cepheid variable stars 3 in the southern galaxy NGC 300. That work led to my participation in the HST key project of using Cepheid variables to determine the distance scale and the Hub- ble constant. It was my one effort in large team research, otherwise I have always preferred to work in teams of two or three people. Q: In your most recent papers you moved to extragalactic star formation, studying young stars in Centaurus A and jets on a vastly larger scale. What were the main results? A: Those were two papers I wrote with Caleb Fassett in which we detailed the star formation that is triggered by the interaction of an extragalactic jet on an adjacent gas cloud. We were able to detect the ageing of the stars as they moved away from the regions of star formation and suggested that they would eventually contribute to the un- resolved, extended envelope of the radio galaxy. I believe that there is a lot more work to be done in examples such as this of star formation taking place under unusual cir- cumstances but I had more or less decided that it was time to stop active astronomical research and to get interested in other things. Towards the end of my scientific career, I took part in two service opportunities. For a year, I became a program officer in the Division of Astronomical Sciences at the Na- tional Science Foundation and, later on, for six years, was Secretary of the American Astronomical Society. While altruism played a part, I found a lot of satisfaction in see- ing for myself how things worked inside each of the two organizations, and I encourage those who can take the time to participate in community activities of this nature. Q: You have recently become interested in science educa- tion for high school students.