Mind the (Black Hole Mass) Gap
You might think that stars with an approximately continuous distribution of masses would lead to remnants with an approximately continuous distribution masses. But you’d be wrong.
UR #3: Star Clusters and Shock-Heated Gas
Read about star clusters in M51 and shock-heated gas around galaxy groups and clusters in this third installment to our undergraduate research series.
Observing the inner workings of star formation
The common picture of star formation includes the gravitational collapse of cores within molecular clouds, with mass accreting either directly or via a disk. An important aspect of the model is that some component must lower the angular momentum of the accreting material. By observing infalling envelopes, especially at different stages of star formation, the mechanism for mass accretion can be studied.
Intro to Astro – Confessions of a Novice Research Student
I’m a fourth year undergraduate from the University of Southampton, UK, studying for my masters at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. With my summer reading completed, and a new exoplanet waiting to be discovered, I stepped off the plane into Boston Logan Int. this September and eagerly exchanged a drizzly English summer for a beautiful New English Autumn.
Investigating the history of the Hyades
If you’re looking at the sky this evening, you can see the constellation of Taurus the Bull just above the horizon to the east. The bull’s face is outlined by a group of a stars that make up the Hyades cluster, a very near and well-known open cluster. This theory paper tries to understand the evolution of the Hyades cluster from formation to the present day using N-body simulations.