Halo Stars: Stellar Rotation, Planets (?), and Ages

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AST 0305431PI: Bruce CarneyINSTITUTION: University of North Carolina, Chapel HillDr. Bruce Carney, in collaboration with John Laird of Bowling Green State University, will carry out a suite of projects that are aimed at developing a better understanding of the stellar populations in our galaxy. They will pursue research activities in four broad areas: 1) following up on their recent observations that suggest that the surprisingly high fraction of field red horizontal branch and red giant branch stars that rotate may be linked to planet accretion, 2) the exploration of the mass-luminosity relationship for binary stars to constrain the stellar helium abundance, 3) a study of metal-poor subgiant stars to refine metallicities and determine ages, and 4) a study of local G dwarfs to investigate the chemical and dynamical evolution of the thin and thick disk populations in the solar neighborhood, and their full metallicity distribution functions, from which follow-up studies will provide details on the element-to-iron ratios as a function of [Fe/H].Undergraduate and graduate students will be involved in the research. The PI plans to expand the mentoring of graduate students through improvement of their teaching skills through team teaching of regular courses and to expand the hands-on outreach activities at Morehead Planetarium. Students at UNC will also be involved with remote use of the 4-meter SOAR telescope.