THE STAR FORMATION NEWSLETTER An electronic publication dedicated to early stellar/planetary evolution and molecular clouds No. 272 — 16 August 2015 Editor: Bo Reipurth ([email protected]) List of Contents The Star Formation Newsletter Interview ...................................... 3 My Favorite Object ............................ 6 Editor: Bo Reipurth [email protected] Perspective ................................... 12 Technical Editor: Eli Bressert Abstracts of Newly Accepted Papers .......... 17 [email protected] Abstracts of Newly Accepted Major Reviews . 48 Technical Assistant: Hsi-Wei Yen New Jobs ..................................... 50 [email protected] Meetings ..................................... 52 Editorial Board Summary of Upcoming Meetings ............. 53 Joao Alves Alan Boss Jerome Bouvier Lee Hartmann Thomas Henning Cover Picture Paul Ho Jes Jorgensen The ∼2 Myr young cluster Westerlund 2 is among Charles J. Lada the most massive known in the Milky Way, with at Thijs Kouwenhoven least a dozen O stars and several Wolf-Rayet stars. Michael R. Meyer It is located towards Carina at a distance of about Ralph Pudritz 6,000 pc. The near-infrared image is about 4.3 pc Luis Felipe Rodr´ıguez wide, and was obtained with WFC3 on HST. Ewine van Dishoeck Hubble 25th Anniversary image. Courtesy STScI. Hans Zinnecker The Star Formation Newsletter is a vehicle for fast distribution of information of interest for as- tronomers working on star and planet formation and molecular clouds. You can submit material for the following sections: Abstracts of recently Submitting your abstracts accepted papers (only for papers sent to refereed journals), Abstracts of recently accepted major re- Latex macros for submitting abstracts views (not standard conference contributions), Dis- and dissertation abstracts (by e-mail to sertation Abstracts (presenting abstracts of new [email protected]) are appended to Ph.D dissertations), Meetings (announcing meet- each Call for Abstracts. You can also ings broadly of interest to the star and planet for- submit via the Newsletter web inter- mation and early solar system community), New face at http://www2.ifa.hawaii.edu/star- Jobs (advertising jobs specifically aimed towards formation/index.cfm persons within the areas of the Newsletter), and Short Announcements (where you can inform or re- quest information from the community). Addition- ally, the Newsletter brings short overview articles on objects of special interest, physical processes or theoretical results, the early solar system, as well as occasional interviews. Newsletter Archive www.ifa.hawaii.edu/users/reipurth/newsletter.htm tral Stars of Planetary Nebulae were initially highly lumi- nous stars that were collapsing to become White Dwarfs Bob O’Dell on the same time-scale that the nebular shells were visi- in conversation with Bo Reipurth ble. Shklovsky had argued for this earlier, as had George Abell, but neither could establish this as fact. Q: You were among the founders of the Hubble Space Tele- scope. Please tell about your involvement with the HST. A: I had always enjoyed making and using telescopes and instrumentation, starting in grade school. At Wiscon- sin I helped build a spectrum scanner and two years af- ter leaving there I joined the faculty at the University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory. When I became Director I was charged with the construction of a 41-inch Ritchey- Chretien telescope and designed and built the first suc- cessful astronomical echelle spectrograph. I had learned about echelles from George Herbig, who built a small in- strument that never produced any publishable-by George’s high standards-results. This new instrument was used for stratospheric observations of water in the atmosphere of Q: You got your PhD in 1962, what was it about, and who Venus (producing a usefully low upper-limit) from a Lear was your advisor? Jet operated at the Ames Research Center, and for map- A: I was lucky to have been admitted early into the De- ping the internal velocities of several HII regions. It was partment of Astronomy at Wisconsin from a teacher’s col- the ”fastest” nebular spectrograph built up to that time. lege in Illinois (now Illinois State University). Wiscon- While at Yerkes I had been drawn into advising NASA sin astronomers had pioneered photoelectric photometry about future astronomy missions. This gave me a good and when Art Code and Don Osterbrock left CalTech for idea of the potential for space astronomy, a subject viewed Wisconsin they started a new era. I was lucky to have as ”opportunist” by many traditional astronomers. In been given this chance since I was in the first generation 1971 I joined Lyman Spitzer and a half dozen others on a of my family to go attend high school let alone graduate NASA advisory group established and chaired by Nancy from college. Wisconsin is where photoelectric photome- Roman. We were charged with giving scientific advice try became modern and was first applied to quantitative and guidelines for a 3-m class space observatory, that was analysis of stars and nebulae. Although I first worked for then being given its first consideration during a low-level, Art Code for 8 months in the early days of the Orbit- one-year feasibility study. The basic idea was first formu- ing Astronomical Observatories, I quickly paired off with lated by Hermann Oberth in the 1920’s and refined in a Don Osterbrock, who directed me into a career path of the report by Lyman soon after WW II when Army-Surplus study of HII regions, planetary nebulae, comets, and the V-2 rockets were brought to the USA. Lyman had led the occasional supernova remnant. During one of the three very successful Copernicus satellite project and Prince- years I was at Wisconsin Don was on leave at the Insti- ton had several programs, including rockets and balloon- tute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Fortunately for borne telescopes that could provide fundamental informa- me, the Carnegie Institution required its faculty to retire tion necessary for taking on a big space telescope project. at 65 and the recently retired Rudolph Minkowski substi- Through my participation in other space telescope activ- tuted for Don, before moving on to Berkeley. The bottom ities conducted by non-NASA parts of the USA govern- line is that I had two superb advisors. ment, I had derived an even more complete picture of what My thesis project was the application of the new tech- could be done. nology of narrow band interference filters and spectrum Lyman and I had met in July of 1967 when we were mem- scanners with photomultiplier detectors to do quantitative bers of a climbing trip in British Columbia organized by measurements of Planetary Nebulae and the Crab Neb- George Wallerstein. Two weeks in the same tent and often ula’s continuum. I then became a Carnegie Fellow at the on the same rope, we came to know one another well. At (then) Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories and more the end of NASA’s feasibility study, he seemed the natural accurately calibrated a method of determination of Plane- person to become the chief scientist for the Large Space tary Nebula distances first developed by Joseph Shklovsky Telescope (later named the Space Telescope to make it (using photographic broadband photometry) using my Plan- easier to sell to the Congress and finally the Hubble Space etary Nebula fluxes . This led to establishing that the Cen- Telescope). However, he was well settled at Princeton, 3 in his mid-50’s, and unwilling to relocate to the Marshall one of the Scientific Instruments and then the proposal Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama to give the for management of the STScI that would have based it project his full attention. He fingered me (then 35) as the in Princeton failed. To me this was cosmically unfair and appropriate person. I was willing to gamble that support I immediately gave Lyman half of my reward. To their for the LST project could created and that the observa- credit, Al Boggess of Goddard (then the Project Scientist) tory would be the most important built in my professional and Ed Weiler (then head of Astronomy in NASA head- lifetime. I left my professorship at Chicago to join an un- quarters) supported the actions of sharing the reward with approved and unfunded project to become the first Project me and my sharing it with Lyman. My first mosaic of im- Scientist for the LST. ages of the Orion Nebula were made with that reward time It is hard to appreciate today that the HST was not an and since then I’ve enjoyed good success in landing time easy sell to American astronomers. The usual response using the evolving complement of Scientific Instruments, was that the projected $300M would be better spent build- although successful proposals are like love, you can never ing 20 copies of the Palomar 200-inch. Much of my early have enough. work was organizing the science advisory structure to draw Q: You have written extensively about the Orion Nebula, in scientists from most of the major astronomy facilities including an Annual Reviews article and several other re- and to educate the community. Multiple times over the views and a popular book. How did your fascination with next several years the project was dead, unfunded by the the Orion Nebula start? Congress. I worked with John Bahcall, Lyman Spitzer, A: During my first semester at Wisconsin the storage and George Field in organizing ”advocate” campaigns to space for equipment and new graduate students was the educate and influence key members of House and Senate annular pier room under the observing floor of the origi- committees. Eventually this worked and we were finally nal observatory’s big refractor. Someone long before had approved for construction in the fiscal year 1978 budget.