Star Formation

Protostars
Matthew Bate and Gilles Chabrier work on protostar formation and collapse simulations using smoothed particle hydrodynamics and grid codes.

Accretion disks
Tim Harries conducts research on the properties of accretion disks using hydrodynamics, instabilities and radiative transfer.

Molecular Clouds
Chris Brunt and Jenny Hatchell work on radio and sub-millimetre observations and theoretical properties of molecular clouds.

Cores to stars
Jenny Hatchell, Chris Brunt and Tim Naylor use optical, infrared, sub-millimetre and radio observations to study the formation of stars.

Debris disks
Jenny Patience uses sub-millimetre observations to understand disks left over from the star formation, where planets may be forming.

Binarity
Jenny Patience uses high angular-resolution optical observations to explore the binarity of stars, important to constrain star formation theories.

Clusters
Tim Naylor uses optical and near-IR observations of stellar clusters to understand their ages and age-spread.

How stars and planets form is one of the most fundamental problems in modern astronomy.

At Exeter, we have a strong observational programme following stars throughout their formation process. Millimetre and sub-millimetre observations tell us how the material collects in the very earliest stages of star formation. Infrared observations allow us to study the young stars, and once the dust around them clears we can use optical observations as well. Optical and infrared studies are also crucial for our studies of young stars in the early universe.

We also undertake powerful numerical simulations based on smoothed particle hydrodynamics to investigate how stars form, the structure of their circumstellar disks, and how binaries and clusters of stars originate. Spectro-polarimetry and radiative-transfer modelling are used to probe the circumstellar flows in the late-stages of star formation. We use numerical simulations to study molecular cloud formation and star formation on galactic scales, and compare these models with large-scale millimeter surveys of molecular clouds.