Star Clusters as Laboratories for Measuring Stellar Mass Loss

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The PI and his collaborators plan to collect and analyze data of white dwarfs in star clusters in order to investigate two of the most important outstanding issues in star formation: the amount of post-main-sequence mass loss as a function of initial mass and the critical mass separating white dwarfs from Type II supernovae. They will observe white dwarfs in star clusters in order to control the variable of stellar age, and thus, stellar mass. The investigators will conduct the work primarily using photometry from 4-m and 8-m class telescopes. They will involve students from high school, Johns Hopkins University and a postdoctoral research associate and generate a significant educational and public outreach effort. The scientific results from this project will be important to other fields within astrophysics, such as stellar populations, interpretation of the mass-to-light ratio of galaxies, galactic chemical evolution and stellar population synthesis modeling.