Institute of Advanced Studies
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Star clusters: a key to understanding how our galaxy formed
Date: Monday, 11 August 2008
Time: 10 am - 4 pm
Location: Old Senate Room, UWA
Thanks for your interest registrations for this Masterclass are now closed.
Enquiries: ias@admin.uwa.edu.au or (+61 8) 6488 1340
Stars come in star clusters of two very different kinds.
The common clusters are loose open collections of about 1000 stars.
Most stars actually form in these open clusters, but the clusters usually evaporate, liberating their stars to move independently around the Galaxy.
The globular clusters are different: these very dense nearly spherical systems of about a million stars are firmly bound together by their gravity.
Although these clusters look simple, they are in fact dynamically very complex. In the dense cluster environment, the stars and the cluster have a symbiotic relationship, each modifying the evolution of the other.
The goal of this masterclass is to convey some of the puzzles of star clusters and how they can help us in the future to solve some of the big problems of galaxy formation.
