North-PHASE
Periodicity, Hot spots, Accretion Stability and Early evolution in young stellar clusters in the Northern Hemisphere
Our team has been awarded 800 for a Legacy Project at the Javalambre Observatory, in Spain. The project will start in January 2023, and acquire data on 6 young clusters over the next 5 years, providing a superb view of the processes that happen in young stars and their inner circumstellar disks during the times of planet formation.
The North-PHASE (Periodicity, Hot spots, Accretion Stability and Early evolution in young stellar clusters in the Northern Hemisphere) project “uses time to map space” to unveil the star-disk connection during the epochs of planet formation. The physical scales in the inner planet-forming disk and young star are much smaller than what can be spatially resolved by direct imaging even with the most powerful telescopes. Nevertheless, repeating observations in time and using photometric variability with broad- and narrow-band filters allows us to explore accretion, stellar spots and occultations by the innermost disk using the Javalambre 80cm telescope. By targetting young clusters over 5 years, we can study how these change in timescales similar to inner planet orbits for thousands of young stars in clusters with ages between 1 and 5 Myr.
The project is led by the University of Dundee, UK, with several international partners.
See the press release here (in Spanish).
Want to join the team?
Contact the PI for more information and further opportunities.
