User:King
From CONSTELLATION
I am a final year graduate student at the University of Exeter working with Mark McCaughrean.
I have been working on a spectroscopic and photometric study of the nearest binary brown dwarf: ε Indi Ba, Bb which is being compared to atmospheric and evolutionary models. This will enable us to place constraints on these models and with the addition of the dynamical masses from astrometric monitoring (McCaughrean et al.) this system will become a very important benchmark.
I am also using VIMOS optical spectroscopy of Chandra-selected members of high-mass star forming regions to determine stellar masses, individual object reddening, and ages to allow investigation of the mass function in a range of clusters.
This links to the Carina HAWK-I project in which I am involved. VLT/HAWK-I was used to obtain near-IR photometry of a large portion of the Carina nebula (including the cluster Tr 14, Tr 15, Tr 16, the Treasure Chest cluster, and the South Pillars). Amongst other things, this will allow us to probe the stellar/sub-stellar population down to ~35 MJup and determine masses, ages, and circumstellar disc fractions. This is complementary to other studies of Carina across different wavelengths, including X-rays from Chandra, mid-IR imaging from Spitzer, continuum imaging from HST, and optical spectroscopy of one of the clusters (Tr 14) with VLT/VIMOS.
Contact details
Address:
- Astrophysics Group, School of Physics, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter EX4 4QL, UK
Phone:
- Work: +44 (0)1392 264 124
Email:
- rob@astro.ex.ac.uk (mailto:rob@astro.ex.ac.uk)
Web: