ASTR 777 - Star and Planet Formation - Spring 2010

This course will primarily review our current understanding of the
formation of the Sun, solarlike stars, and their planets. We will
discuss the collapse of molecular cloud cores, the properties of
protostars, the formation and propagation of supersonic jets and
outflows, the different types of young stars, the birth of brown
dwarfs, the evolution of young stars towards the main sequence, planet
formation, the origin of the solar system and meteorites.

Classes will be 75 min and will take place in the Fern Room, every  
monday
from 1:30 to 2:45 PM, in this 2 credit course, covering the following
topics:

1. The Formation of the Solar System
2. Molecular Clouds, Cloud Cores, and Chemistry
3. Turbulent Fragmentation and Collapse Processes
4. Molecular Outflows
5. Herbig-Haro Jets
6. Embedded Sources and T Tauri Stars
7. Circumstellar Disks and Accretion
8. Pre-Main Sequence Binaries
9. FUors and EXors
10. Brown Dwarfs: Formation Scenarios and Early Evolution
11. Formation of Giant Planets
12. Formation of Terrestrial Planets
13. Extrasolar Planets
14. The Birth of Massive Stars and Clusters

Each class will give an overview of a certain topic. The last 5-10
minutes of each class, a student will lead a discussion of a recently
published 4 page ApJ Letter on the subject of the class (handed out
the week before) to illustrate current research in the particular field.

The goal of the course is to provide an overview of our current
understanding of star and planet formation, an area that is developing
almost explosively at the moment, but also to illustrate the probing
and searching nature of the research process, which is always more
messy and uncertain than the clean results that eventually appear in
text books once a subject has been fully understood.

There will be no exam, but at the end of the course, all students will
have to write an observing proposal on a subject to be chosen by each
student among those that have been discussed during the course. We
will then all form an Observing Proposal Committee, and will together
discuss the merits and weaknesses of each proposal. I will discuss the
review process as it is being applied at all major observatories and
the criteria that must be fulfilled to successfully win observing
time.

The final course grade will be based on attendance, presentations of
ApJ Letters, and the observing proposal.

The course will primarily use chapters from the Protostars and Planets
V conference (which will be available from the PPV web page), as well
as hand-outs.

Classes will take place in the Fern Room IfA on mondays at 1:30 PM.

Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.

Bo Reipurth

reipurth@ifa.hawaii.edu