RASC Regular Meeting, April 12, 2021

Posted on

Planets under construction: how to study a million year process

RASC Regular Meeting, Monday April 12, 2021

7:00 PM, Meet and Greet

7:30 PM, Meeting begins, including guest talk, News from Space, AstroImaging Corner, and other RASC news.

FREE and open to the public.

Zoom link for this meeting

Guest Speaker:

Dr. Nienke van der Marel

Planets under construction: how to study a million year process

Planets around other stars, also called exoplanets, are seen everywhere! In the last 25 years, thousands of exoplanets have been found throughout the Milky Way. How do we find these planets? What are the chances of discovering life there? And if they are so common, why is it that we still don’t know how they are formed? With the ALMA telescope we can now finally zoom into the birth cradles of planets: dusty disks around young stars. The spectacular images have given us new insights, but also raised many more questions on the process of planet formation.

Nienke van der Marel is a Banting postdoctoral fellow at University of Victoria since December 2019, working on planet formation using the revolutionary ALMA telescope. Before this she worked for 2 years as NRC postdoctoral fellow at the Herzberg institute for Astronomy, and 2 years as Parrent fellow at the University of Hawaii. She received her PhD cum laude in 2015 at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where she originates. In September 2021 she will join Leiden University again as assistant professor. Nienke is also the founder and host of Nerd Nite Victoria, with public science talks in an informal setting every third Wednesday of the month since August 2018. 

Nienke van der Marel at Mauna Kea

 

 

** Please note that this meeting may be recorded and posted on youtube. By joining you agree to becoming part of this recording. **