Fall, 2005

Dr. Carol Jones, Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy had a short visit from four collaborators.

Stan Owocki of the University of Delaware, Richard Townsend of the University of Delaware/University College London, Asif ud-Doula from North Carolina State University, and Robert Nikutta of the University of Pottsdam in Germany were here for two days to speak with Prof. Jones.

Richard Townsend gave a talk entitled "Magnetic confinement of radiatively driven winds around hot, luminous stars."

Stan Owocki gave a talk entitled "Winds that Sail on Starlight".

Dr Gautier Mathys, Director of Science Operations at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope facility at Cerro Paranal, Chile is here for the month of October to visit Dr. John Landstreet. The two are studying the chemical compositions and magnetic fields of a group of highly magnetic stars a couple of times more massive than the Sun.

Congratulations go out to Dr. Carol Jones, who was appointed as Assistant Professor in the Departments of Physics and Astronomy, Applied Mathematics, and Mathematics, effective September 1, 2005.

Summer, 2005

PhD student Michael Attard is the 2005 winner of the William H. Wehlau Scholarship.

Attard received his B.A.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Toronto in 2004. Attard Chose to pursue his childhood interest in Astronomy after his undergraduate degree, starting at Western in the fall of 2004 as a Masters student under the supervision of Prof. Martin Houde.

Of particular interest to Attard is star formation and, more specifically, the role that magnetic fields have to play in the star formation process.

Stars form in large interstellar clouds of gas and dust through the gravitational collapse of dense regions within the gas. However, the presence of embedded magnetic fields can slow this collapse and, in turn, the rate of star formation. An understanding of how "magnetic support" works could yield answers to important questions regarding how stars acquire their observed mass distribution.

Since September 2004, Houde and Attard have worked on development of a new instrument, the Submillimetre High Angular Resolution camera Polarimeter (SHARP).
SHARP was recently commissioned at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory located on Mauna Kea, on the big island of Hawaii.

This work is being done in collaboration with other graduate students and researchers from the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the California Institute of Technology, University of Wisconsin, NASA-Ames, and NASA-Goddard. This polarimeter will be capable of mapping magnetic fields within star formation regions to an unprecedented accuracy.

Spring, 2005

Twelve members of the UWO Astronomy Group attended the recent Annual Meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA) held at the Universite de Montreal.
In addition to Professors David Gray, John Landstreet, Martin Houde, Paul Wiegert, and Amelia Wehlau, other attendees were CITA Research Fellow Eduard Vorobyov, graduate students Michael Attard and Kevin Brown, and undergraduate students Jenny Power, Jessie Silaj, Anna Townshend, and James Wurster.

The more than 300 participants at the meeting set a new record for CASCA meetings and among them were 17 members who hold BSc.'s, MSc's, or Ph.D.'s in Astronomy from Western.

Early 2005

Prof. Martin Houde observed at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO),
located on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, for five half nights (Feb. 3-7).

His current project consists of obtaining spectroscopic data (rotational transitions of the HCN and HCO+ molecules), which will be combined with existing polarimetry data at 350 µm, to map the characteristics of the magnetic field across the NGC2264 star forming region.

Dr. Takahiroh Kudoh , who had been with the department for 3 years as a researcher in the field of Star Formation has taken a faculty appointment in Tokyo, Japan.

Prof. John D. Landstreet went to Chile in January to use one of the four 8-meter telescopes at the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Paranal Observatory.

There he observed together with ESO staff astronomer Stefano Bagnulo, using the FORS1 low-dispersion, multi-object spectropolarimeter to measure magnetic fields in middle main sequence stars in open clusters. Together with his former Ph.D. student Gregg Wade, who is now teaching at RMC, they are carrying out a large survey of magnetism in such cluster stars in order to obtain observational constraints on how stellar magnetic fields evolve during and shortly after the main sequence phase in a star's life.

Dr. Eduard Vorobyov joins the department for an additional two years as a CITA (Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics) Research Fellow.

Fall, 2004

Kevin Brown is the 2004 winner of the William Henry Wehlau Prize. The prize is given annually to an outstanding graduate student.

Kevin started Western as an undergraduate, gaining experience in research at Elginfield Observatory and on faculty research projects. He co-authoured two publications based on high resolution stellar spectra taken at the observatory. In his fourth year, Brown was voted to have the best undergraduate research project in Earth Sciences.

Kevin then completed his M.Sc. at St. Mary's University, Halifax, and returned to Western in 2002. Working with Prof. David Gray, they are developing a new technique to precisely measure the line-of-sight velocity of stars in space. Such measurements are useful for the detection of extra-solar planets, observations of binary star orbits, analysis of non-radial oscillations, and measurements of surface features of stars.

The Wehlau prize was established by family, friends, and colleagues of Bill Wehlau, and was first awarded in 1997. Wehlau spearheaded the establishment of the Department of Astronomy in 1966 and was Department Head until his retirement in 1991. Wehlau was instrumental in founding Western's Elginfield Observatory, was central in the establishment of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), later serving as its Chairman of the board. He also served on numerous national and international committees, and had an active research career until his sudden death in 1995.

Summer, 2004

Dr. John Landstreet, accompanied by undergraduate student Anna Townsend, had a successful observing run using the GECKO high resolution spectrograph on the 3.6m telescope at CFHT on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Dr. Carol Jones of the Astronomy Group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy attended the recent meeting on "The Nature and Evolution of Disks around Hot Stars" held in Johnson City, Tennessee. She presented a paper entitled "The Stability of Viscous Circumstellar Envelopes" by C. E. Jones, T.A.A.Sigut and J. M. Porter (John Moore's University). She also co-moderated the final day of the meeting with Lee Hartmann (Harvard) and is co-author with Dr. Hartmann on an invited summary paper entitled "Disks Around Hot Stars: Summary and Future Perspectives".

Prof. John Landstreet attended IAU Symposium 224 entitled "The A Star Puzzle" in Poprad, Slovakia.

John Landstreet then heads directly for an observing run at CFHT (Canada France Hawaii Telescope) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

Dr. Phillipe Andre, an expert observational astronomer from Saclay, Paris, France, spent a few days here doing collaborative work on star formation with Dr. Shantanu Basu.

Dr. Andre specializes in infrared and sub-millimetre wavelength observations of regions in our galaxy where early star formation is taking place.

Spring, 2004

Prof. Shantanu Basu attended the XXIVth Moriond Astrophysics Meeting entitled The Young Local Universe, at La Thuile, Aosta Valley, Italy, from March 21-26, 2004.
Dr. Basu presented an invited talk on "The Role of Magnetic Fields in the Formation of Dense Cores" .

Prof. John Landstreet spent 6 weeks of his sabbatical year at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Headquarters in Santiago, Chile.

John Landstreet has an ongoing collaboration with Dr Gautier Mathys,
Director of Science Operations at the European Southern Observatory's Very
Large Telescope facility at Cerro Paranal, Chile. The two are studying the
chemical compositions and magnetic fields of a group of highly magnetic
stars a couple of times more massive than the Sun. Mathys will visit
Western for three weeks in May.

Fall, 2003

May-June, 2003

April, 2003

Dr. Shantanu Basu and Dr. Takahiro Kudoh attended the conference Magnetic Fields and Star Formation: Theory versus Observations, held in Madrid, Spain, on April 21-25, 2003. Dr. Basu made a presentation entitled, "Implications of Magnetic Field Strength Data, for Theoretical Models of Molecular Clouds". Dr. Kudoh made a presentation entitled, "Non-linear Hydromagnetic Wave Support of a Stratified Molecular Cloud".

January, 2003

Dr. Shantanu Basu was appointed as the CASCA representative on the CITA council.

Dr. Peter Brown was named to the newly created CASCA committee for Solar System and Planetary Science.

MSc. graduate Heather Scott has been hired as a part-time Education Co-ordinator for CASCA.

Western's Elginfield Observatory houses one of the largest optical telescopes in Canada. See the full Western News article.

Summer to end of 2002

Drs. Shantanu Basu and Takahiro Kudoh of the Astronomy Group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy attended the conference "Star Formation 2002: Magnetohydrodynamics, Radiation Diagnostics, and Chemistry", held in Taipei and Taroko Gorge, Taiwan. Dr. Basu presented an invited talk entitled "From Clouds to Cores: Magnetic Field Effects on the Structure of Molecular Gas", and Dr. Kudoh presented an invited talk entitled "Numerical Simulation of Star Formation Problems using the CIP-MOCCT Method".

Drs. David F. Gray and John Landstreet of the Astronomy Group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy attended International Astronomical Union Symposium 210 on "Modelling Stellar Atmospheres" in Uppsala, Sweden. Dr. Gray gave a keynote address entitled "Stellar Photospheres: Success, Failure, Ambiguity, and Ambition" and Dr. Landstreet presented the conference's concluding remarks. The meeting brought together world experts on stellar atmospheres to focus on the building of mathematical models and how the models compare with real stars.

Dr. John Landstreet of the Astronomy Group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy spoke on "Le champ magnetique des etoiles A et B" at a workshop on "Quelques aspects de la physique stellaire: etoiles de masses solaire et intermediaires" at the Geneva Observatory, and while there, served as a member of the PhD thesis examining jury for a student of the observatory. Dr. Landstreet also attended the meeting on "Asteroseismology across the HR Diagram" in Porto, Portugal, where he presented a paper entitled "Observations of Rapid Radial Velocity Variations of Spectral Lines in Rapidly Oscillating (roAp) Stars".

Spring 2002

Drs. Shantanu Basu, Takahiro Kudoh and John Landstreet and Mr. R. Srawley, and Dr. Charles Curry of the Astronomy Group in the Physics and Astronomy Department attended the 33rd annual meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society, hosted by the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Penticton, BC.

After accepting the Carlyle S. Beals award which is presented semi-annually to a Canadian astronomer in recognition of outstanding achievement in research, Dr. Landstreet gave the Beals Lecture entitled "Magnetic Fields in Stars".

Other papers presented by UWO researchers at the meeting were "The Dynamic Effect of Nonlinear Alfven Waves in Self-Gravitating Molecular Clouds" by T. Kudoh and S. Basu and "Numerical Models of Galactic Superbubbles" by R. Srawley and S. Basu.

Also, Dr. Charles Curry gave a paper entitled, "Shapes of Molecular Cloud Cores and the Filamentary
Mode of Star Formation."

Early 2002

Professor John Landstreet is the recipient of the C.S. Beals Award for the year 2002.

Dr. Takahiro Kudoh has joined us as a postdoctoral fellow. Takahiro will be a Fellow of the International Galactic Plane Survey as well as of SHARCNET, the new computational science institute based at UWO. He will be working primarily with Shantanu Basu.

Takahiro comes to us from a previous position as Research Fellow at the Astronomical Data Analysis Center of the National Astronomical Observatory, Japan. His scientific experience is quite broad. He has great expertise in numerical MHD simulations, and has used this to study astrophysical jets, stellar winds, accretion disks, and the solar atmosphere, among other things.