Michael Kuhn (Hertfordshire) - Tracing star formation in the Galaxy with Gaia (and other surveys)

When: Friday, December 2, 2022, 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM
Where: Physics (G. O. Jones building) room 610 & online

Speaker: Michael Kuhn (Hertfordshire)

Tracing star formation in the Galaxy with Gaia (and other surveys)

ESA’s Gaia mission has provided an unprecedented 3D view of our Solar neighborhood, including the nearest star-forming regions. In particular, Gaia proves useful for linking the kinematics and spatial distributions of young stellar objects on small and large scales. Within individual star-forming regions, Gaia astrometry is sensitive to sub-km/s motions of stars, the precision necessary for determining whether groups of newly formed stars are dynamically hot or cold. Meanwhile, on large scales, Gaia reveals how star formation is connected to Galactic spiral structure. I will discuss several results relating to young stellar kinematics on various Galactic sales, including (on small scales) the expansion of young star clusters and associations and (on large scales) the finding that most of the nearby star-forming regions form several distinct, kpc-scale, spur-like structures.