[AstroTours] Unearthing Stellar Fossils of our Galactic History
Please note that this event is not run by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada - Toronto Centre. Please contact the organizers for more information.
Join us at the August AstroTour! The event is FREE and open to all. NO PRIOR REGISTRATION REQUIRED!! Our August AstroTour features UofT research fellow Dr. Ronan Kerr's talk on star formation and what it can tell us about our galaxy!
Talk Abstract:
Thousands of stellar nurseries called molecular clouds are distributed throughout our galaxy, where dense gas is actively collapsing to form new stars. Observations of these clouds provide an exquisite view of their structures and dynamics, although they cannot reveal the larger processes that guide the assembly of molecular clouds out of diffuse gas. Young stars preserve the history of the parent molecular cloud by inheriting its properties, leaving behind a fossil record of cloud evolution that persists for tens of millions of years after formation. The Gaia spacecraft has observed nearly 2 billion stars in our galaxy, and with this treasure trove of new observations, we are now able to harness this fossil record to reveal the processes that guide local star formation, from supernovae to stellar winds to collisions between interstellar clouds, and study how these processes interact to produce the wealth of star-forming environments seen in our galaxy. In this talk, I will discuss recent advancements to the study of star formation over tens of million-year timescales and explain how those discoveries can inform the structure of the galaxy we live in, and even the environment where our solar system formed.
About the Speaker:
Originally from Vancouver, Ronan recently joined the Dunlap Institute at the University of Toronto as a research fellow after completing his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. He is frequently involved in astronomy outreach, which has included operating the telescopes at many past AstroTours events. Outside of academia, he enjoys stargazing, astrophotography, exploring new places both out in nature and overseas, playing video games, and DnD.
Website URL: https://uoft.me/astrotours
Organized by: AstroTours at the University of Toronto
Location: Wallberg Memorial Building, Room WB116
Date and Time: Thursday August 7th, 2025. 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT.
Demos and telescope tours: 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM EDT. McLennan Physical Laboratories
