Halo Stars: Stellar Rotation, Planets ?, and Ages

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AST 0307340PI: John LairdINSTITUTION: Bowling Green State UniversityDr. John Laird, in collaboration with Bruce Carney of UNC, Chapel Hill, 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 research activities and results will be integrated into K-16 science education through a masters program for in-service physical science teachers that emphasizes modeling research-based teaching strategies, and explicitly includes an astronomy component and a collaboration in northwest Ohio of 7-12 educators, colleges, and community and business partners to enhance recruiting, preparation, and support of 7-12 math and science teachers. ***