Max Planck Institute for Astronomy - Annual Report 2005

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126 V. People and Events Fig. V.8.2: Sebastian Wolf during his talk on protoplanetary disks. (Photo: DFG) young stars to be traced in three spatial dimensions. These simulations enable predictions of observational quantities that reflect the growth of dust to planetesimals and later to planets, among other things. Such observational quantities can be spectra, images, polarization maps or interferometric data of circumstellar disks. These predictions can be verified by observing real stars. One such prediction is, for instance, that young massive planets can be detected by the warm, dense dust in their immediate surroundings and by the gaps they leave along their orbits in a gaseous disk around the star. Observations of this kind will be made possible with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (alma) that is scheduled to go into operation within the next few years in the Chilean Atacama Desert. Within these simulations, Wolf also investigated the questions as to how the appearance of protoplanetary disks can be affected by variously shaped dust grains, clumpy spatial distributions of the dust, and the sizes and chemical compositions of the dust particles. Even now, observations of protoplanetary disks allow little insight into the first steps of planet formation. So with the aid of his simulations, Wolf was able to make a breakthrough by demonstrating that within a prominent protoplanetary disk – the one around the »Butterfly Star« – the growth of dust grains proceeds faster than in the circumstellar envelope of the same object. The dust grains in the circumstellar disk are already 100 to 1000 times bigger than those in the surrounding thin envelope, which obviously still harbors the original dust population. This result corroborates the theoretical predictions and is based on high-resolution images obtained in various wavebands with different telescopes, e.g., the Hubble Space Telescope and the Radio Observatory in Owens Valley, California. It is customary at the presentation of the prizes that one of the prizewinners – in 2005 there were six of them – gives a scientific talk about his subject. It is considered a special honor for Sebastian Wolf to have been chosen for this task. His topic was: »Can we observe planet formation?« This, too, proves the attractiveness of astronomy on the general research scene. Marie Curie Excellence Grant for Elena Masciadri Elena Masciadri was hired at the MPIA at the time of the feasibility study of the Planet finder, a sophisticated second generation instrument for the VLT. During her stay at the MPIA, she concentrated on two topics. She supported the Planet finder project on the instrumental side. In particular, she carried out a study on the scintillation effects on this instrument, which was fundamental to quantify these effects, to optimize the conception of the Planet finder, and to define the number of deformable mirrors needed to correct the wavefront perturbations induced by the atmospheric turbulence. As her second area of work, she realized surveys for searches for extrasolar planets and Brown Dwarfs orbiting around nearby young stars, employing the direct imaging technique. To do so, she used high-contrast imaging techniques, taking advantage of the high-performance infrared camera naco installed on one unit of the VLT, in particular the new state-of-the-art SDI/naco. This latter instrument is based on the simultaneous differential imaging technique, with the double goal of reducing the speckle noise at sub-arcsecond separations and revealing methane-rich faint objects such as the majority of the young and massive planets potentially orbiting young (100 – 200 million years old) nearby stars. It is therefore a technique that may greatly improve our ability to detect faint objects with a contrast of 9 to 11 magnitudes in H at 0.5 seconds of arc separation from the central star. This corresponds to planets having masses on the order of 3 to 10 Jupiter masses and ages of 1 to 200 million years. These studies permitted her to strongly constrain the planet formation models. Her interest was also directed towards the conception of alternative techniques for image processing, aiming at an automatic detection of planets in deep imaging such as the wavelet technique, and she investigated the possibilities of detecting outflows from very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. This topic is particularly interesting because the detection of
Fig. V.8.3: Elena Masciadri at her office in Arcetri near Florence. these outflows might throw light on the formation mechanisms of Brown Dwarfs. The Marie Curie Excellence Grants are part of the Marie Curie Actions to Promote Excellence. The project is prepared in connection with an institute, in this case the Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, in Florence, Italy. The project is focused on a topic that Elena considers strategic for ground-based astronomy: the characterization of the optical turbulence. The European funds will give her the opportunity to create an independent research team working on a European strategic and multidisciplinary topic at the boundary between astrophysics and physics of the atmosphere. The final goal of the project is to set up an automatic system for 3-D simulations and forecasts of the optical turbulence (OT) above astronomical sites. The estimate of the OT is essential for astronomers to forecast the spatial and temporal distribution of the OT above a telescope and to schedule scientific programs (so-called flexible scheduling) to be executed. The simulation of the OT can also play a crucial role in the selection of the astronomical sites and the optimization of the adaptive optics techniques. The financial resources invested in ground-based astronomy are huge and only an efficient management of telescopes can make ground-based astronomy competitive with respect to space-based astronomy. The technique proposed in this project is presently the only one that can provide a solution to a precise need of as- V.8 Prizes for Young Scientists 127 trophysics and can place Europe in a leading position in this research field. Besides this, the technique proposed will also provide new insight into the formation and development mechanisms of optical turbulence, unaccessible through other methods. The long-term goal is to create a nucleus of people specialized in turbulence effects on wavefront propagation for astronomy applications, who will join other Italian groups working on high angular resolution techniques (AO, interferometry etc.) that are already internationally recognized. The intention is to strengthen the national tradition in this discipline and to lay the foundations for the realization of a European Center for High Angular Resolution Techniques. Since part of the work will be focused on Mt. Graham, the LBT Consortium and thus also the MPIA have an interest in Elena Masciadri's work. Mt. Graham will be the first objective for the realization of the forecasting system. All projects related to the LBT, in particular those whose performance critically depends on turbulence (such as linc/nirvana), might benefit from these studies. The goal of the forecast is quite ambitious, the road will be long and difficult, but Masciadri thinks that the final feedback can justify this effort. It is therefore interesting for everybody at »LBT's home« to try and stay informed on reciprocal progress of everyone's work in order to get the maximum output from this project. Ernst Patzer Prize for Jorge Penarrubia, Marco Barden and Anders Johansen The Ernst Patzer Prize for Supporting Junior Scientists is funded by the Scientific Ernst Patzer Foundation established by the widow of the philosopher and art lover, Ernst Patzer. The goal of the foundation is to sponsor and support science and research mainly in the field of astronomy. The award goes to young scientists at the MPIA for the best publication in a refereed journal during their time as PhD students or post-docs at the MPIA. An evaluation board set up for this purpose – consisting of two MPIA scientists and one external scientist – examines the proposals submitted. Each of the three prizewinners was awarded 2000 euros. Marco Barden was awarded the prize for an outstanding paper on the evolution of disk galaxies. In his comprehensive study, he analyzed images obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope within the Gems project (Galaxy Evolution from Morphologies and SEDs). He combined these with data from the combo–17 galaxy survey carried out at the MPIA. By precisely determining the average object size of 5700 galaxies, he was able to establish the evolution of disk galaxies from redshift z � 1 (about seven billion years ago) to the present time. This corresponds to about half the age of the Universe.
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Contents Preface ..................
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6 I. General I.1 Scientific Goals U
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8 I. General massive protostars and
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10 I. General achieve higher angula
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12 I. General The institute is co-l
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14 I. General Point Source sensitiv
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16 I. General Edinburgh Groningen D
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18 II. Highlights II.1 Light Echoes
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20 II. Highlights 10 arcsec Fig. II
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22 II. Highlights AB Dor C AB Dor A
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24 II. Highlights II.3 The First He
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26 II. Highlights II.4 Planetesimal
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28 II. Highlights azimuthal directi
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30 II. Highlights ticles fall faste
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32 II. Highlights ANTU Seyfert 2 ga
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34 II. Highlights cretion disk, one
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36 II. Highlights 8.5 �m 2.3 ly 0
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38 II. Highlights II.6 Massive Star
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40 II. Highlights log M� /pc2 �
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42 II. Highlights II.7 Observations
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44 II. Highlights log IR luminosity
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46 II.8 Dynamics, Dust, and Young S
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48 II. Highlights and we see a temp
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50 III. Selected Research Areas III
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52 III. Scientific Work Fig. III.1.
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54 III. Scientific Work the Data Ar
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56 III. Scientific Work The Field o
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58 III. Scientific Work lower than
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60 III. Scientific Work
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62 III. Scientific Work Fig. III.1.
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64 III. Scientific Work z [AU] 1 0
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66 III. Scientific Work line observ
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68 III. Scientific Work log F /mJy
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70 III. Scientific Work Column dens
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72 III.3 The Galaxy-Dark Matter Con
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74 III. Scientific Work redshift su
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Page 112 and 113: 110 V. People and Events 1� 10�
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Page 120 and 121: 118 V. People and Events The IMPRS
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Page 146 and 147: 144 Staff Directors: Henning (Actin
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Page 150 and 151: 148 Cooperation with industrial Fir
Page 152 and 153: 150 Conferences Conferences and Mee
Page 154 and 155: 152 Conferences D. Lemke: JWST-miri
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Page 158 and 159: 156 Publications Szalay, I. Szapudi
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Page 168 and 169: 166 Publications ASP Conf. Ser. 331
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Page 172: The Max Planck Society The Max Plan
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Max Planck Institute for Astronomy - Annual Report 2005

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