Understanding the Birth of Stars in the Orion Nebula

这个天文学项目旨在了解恒星是如何形成的。大多数恒星，特别是大恒星，但也有像太阳这样的恒星，由数千个物体组成的星团。猎户座星云是最著名的年轻星团之一。即使用小型望远镜也能看到这个恒星的诞生地。使用大型专业望远镜，研究人员可以分辨出星团中的数千颗恒星，其中大多数只有几百万年的历史。来自加州大学圣地亚哥分校的团队将比以往任何时候都更详细地研究猎户座星系团。他们将使用凯克天文台和哈勃太空望远镜(HST)测量恒星的运动。通过将猎户座中恒星的运动与计算机模型进行比较，获奖者将更好地了解恒星是如何形成的。在进行这项研究的同时，该团队还将为女性在科学和工程领域的更好教育(BE WISE)计划开发一个新的、为期一天的动手研讨会。Be Wise直接与7-12年级的女孩合作，希望鼓励更多的女孩追随科学领域的职业。获奖者寻求测试群星形成的模型。他们将专注于猎户座星云星团(ONC)，探测质量跨度为三个数量级的恒星，一直到棕矮星的极限。该团队建议通过将来自HST和Keck图像的精确自行测量与来自Keck光谱观测的空间分辨率径向速度测量相结合，建立ONC中心的三维运动学地图。ONC是最近的大质量恒星形成地点，为详细研究年轻的主序前恒星和星团如何形成和演化提供了独特的机会。取决于模型中包含的物理过程(例如，湍流、反馈、磁场等)。目前的恒星/星团形成理论对星团内部的动力学和子结构产生了非常不同的预测。因此，对ONC的运动学研究是区分不同模型的有力工具，并将在总体上为恒星形成提供重要的约束。加州大学圣地亚哥分校的一名研究生将深度参与这个项目。

This astronomy project aims at understanding how stars are formed. Most stars, especially large ones but also stars like the Sun, form in clusters of thousands of objects. One of the best-known clusters of young stars is found in the Orion Nebula. This birthplace for stars can be viewed even with small telescopes. With large professional telescopes researchers can distinguish the thousands of stars in the cluster, most of which are only a few million years old. The team from the University of California San Diego will study the Orion cluster in greater detail than ever before. They will measure the movements of the stars using the Keck Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). By comparing the motions of the stars in Orion with computer models, the awardees will reach a better understanding of how the stars were formed. While conducting this research, the team will also develop a new, one day, hands-on workshop for the Better Education for Women in Science and Engineering (BE WiSE) program. BE WiSE works directly with 7-12th grade girls and hopes to encourage more of them to follow careers in the sciences.The awardees seek to test models of clustered star formation. They will focus on the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC), probing stars with masses spanning three orders of magnitude down to the brown dwarf limit. The team propose to build a three-dimensional kinematic map of the center of the ONC by combining precise proper motion measurements from HST and Keck images with spatially-resolved radial velocity measurements from Keck spectroscopic observations. The ONC is the nearest site of massive star formation and provides a unique opportunity to study in detail how young pre-main-sequence stars and clusters form and evolve. Depending on the physical processes included in the model (e.g., turbulence, feedback, magnetic fields, etc.) current theories of star/cluster formation yield very different predictions for the internal dynamics and sub-structure within the cluster. Thus, kinematic studies of the ONC are a powerful tool for distinguishing between the models and will provide important constraints on star formation in general. A graduate student at UC San Diego will be heavily involved in this project.