Adolescent stars and planets in our neighbourhood from Gaia and FunnelWeb. This project aims to understand how infant stars in their stellar nurseries reach adulthood in the Galactic disk, and link stellar birth to the presence and evolution of adolescent planetary systems. The billion dollar Gaia satellite will change the study of stellar adolescence, with data beginning to flow with an initial public release this year. FunnelWeb – the largest star survey of its kind, covering the entire Southe ....Adolescent stars and planets in our neighbourhood from Gaia and FunnelWeb. This project aims to understand how infant stars in their stellar nurseries reach adulthood in the Galactic disk, and link stellar birth to the presence and evolution of adolescent planetary systems. The billion dollar Gaia satellite will change the study of stellar adolescence, with data beginning to flow with an initial public release this year. FunnelWeb – the largest star survey of its kind, covering the entire Southern sky – will augment this data. This project will combine these datasets, identifying the birthplace of the majority of nearby adolescent stars in the Southern sky and helping to discover and characterise their planetary systems. The results relating to the origin and Galactic context of our solar system are of broad public interest.Read moreRead less
Revealing the history of the Milky Way Galaxy through precision stellar spectroscopy. How did the Milky Way Galaxy form? The answer to this fundamental question lies in the chemical compositions of stars. Enormous investments by the Australian and international community into state-of-the-art facilities and surveys will yield a 1 million star sample for chemical analysis. To fully harvest the information from those surveys requires stellar chemical composition measurements of the highest possibl ....Revealing the history of the Milky Way Galaxy through precision stellar spectroscopy. How did the Milky Way Galaxy form? The answer to this fundamental question lies in the chemical compositions of stars. Enormous investments by the Australian and international community into state-of-the-art facilities and surveys will yield a 1 million star sample for chemical analysis. To fully harvest the information from those surveys requires stellar chemical composition measurements of the highest possible precision. This project aims to use recently pioneered analysis techniques that have led the field of chemical abundance measurements in stars to the unprecedented precision level of 2 per cent (a five-fold improvement) to chart the evolution of our Galaxy over cosmic time.Read moreRead less
Dynamic stars: atmospheres, evolution and asteroseismology. By developing state-of-the-art stellar atmosphere and evolution models, the project will endeavour to answer some of the key outstanding questions in stellar astrophysics including how magnetic fields are manifested in stars, how stars are affected by convection, how oscillations are excited in stars and how old the most ancient stars in the Milky Way are. The project will endeavour to make obsolete the free parameters that have hampere ....Dynamic stars: atmospheres, evolution and asteroseismology. By developing state-of-the-art stellar atmosphere and evolution models, the project will endeavour to answer some of the key outstanding questions in stellar astrophysics including how magnetic fields are manifested in stars, how stars are affected by convection, how oscillations are excited in stars and how old the most ancient stars in the Milky Way are. The project will endeavour to make obsolete the free parameters that have hampered stellar modelling for the past half-century. Using unique stellar models the project aims to provide rich legacy resources for countless studies in modern astronomy and provide the necessary theoretical underpinning for ambitious Australian-led Milky Way surveys, such as GALAH and SkyMapper, and international satellite missions such as Kepler, TESS and PLATO.Read moreRead less
Australian Laureate Fellowships - Grant ID: FL110100012
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$2,594,354.00
Summary
Unravelling the history of the Milky Way Galaxy and searching for exoplanets through the chemical compositions of stars. Understanding the past and future of the Milky Way Galaxy and how planets form around stars are two of the main challenges facing astronomy today. This project will make crucial inroads to both of these topics through a combination of sophisticated supercomputer simulations and unprecedented observations with world-leading Australian facilities.
Galactic Archaeology: a new probe of the cold dark matter paradigm. The project capitalises on Australia's technological leadership in carrying out wide-field surveys, and on Australia's intellectual leadership in stellar astronomy and galactic archaeology. HERMES is the new Anglo-Australian Telescope instrument that will keep Australians competitive in a field that is set to explode in the coming decade.
The origin and evolution of heavy elements in the early universe. Everything in our Solar System, including all life on Earth, was created long ago out of material forged inside fiery stellar furnaces. The latest theoretical simulations of element production in red giant stars reveals the processes that gave us our existence, as well as help us to understand the origin of the galaxy that we inhabit.
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE200100012
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$632,000.00
Summary
Exploring the Dynamic Universe with DREAMS. DREAMS is a revolutionary wide-field infrared surveyor designed to allow astronomers to unlock new science and foster international collaborations focused on important but elusive, infrared transient cosmic phenomena. Continually scanning the southern sky, DREAMS will provide “real time” data that will transform the depth and quality of astronomical observation. Combining off-the-shelf parts with scientific expertise from around the world, this telesco ....Exploring the Dynamic Universe with DREAMS. DREAMS is a revolutionary wide-field infrared surveyor designed to allow astronomers to unlock new science and foster international collaborations focused on important but elusive, infrared transient cosmic phenomena. Continually scanning the southern sky, DREAMS will provide “real time” data that will transform the depth and quality of astronomical observation. Combining off-the-shelf parts with scientific expertise from around the world, this telescope will help answer questions that are both practical and profound. DREAMS is an important component of a longer-term international strategy that will reinforce Australia’s global leadership in the realm of Infrared Transient Astronomy.Read moreRead less
Space Science and Astronomy: Dissecting the Galaxy with High Resolution Multi-Object Echelle Spectrograph (HERMES) II: Decisive Observations. Australia has long been a world leader in wide-field astronomical surveys, and the new High Resolution Multi-Object Echelle Spectrograph (HERMES) being built for the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) will enhance that leadership position. Through a combination of Australian technological and scientific advances, the surveys we conduct with HERMES will allow ....Space Science and Astronomy: Dissecting the Galaxy with High Resolution Multi-Object Echelle Spectrograph (HERMES) II: Decisive Observations. Australia has long been a world leader in wide-field astronomical surveys, and the new High Resolution Multi-Object Echelle Spectrograph (HERMES) being built for the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) will enhance that leadership position. Through a combination of Australian technological and scientific advances, the surveys we conduct with HERMES will allow us to study galaxy formation and stellar astrophysics in unprecedented detail. There are powerful synergies between HERMES and Skymapper, another Australian astronomical survey, as well as with Gaia, the billion-dollar European space mission for studying the Galaxy; HERMES will thus promote both national and international research collaboration. In this proposal we lay the observational groundwork for maximising the scientific return from HERMES.Read moreRead less
Directly Imaging Exoplanet Birth. Exoplanet research has now entered a new era. Radial velocity and transit techniques have shown that planetary systems are extremely varied and complex, with the secrets to their taxonomy buried at the earliest epochs of planetary system evolution. This project will directly image these earliest stages of planetary formation through innovative algorithms that make best use of the largest infrared telescopes in the world, utilising their full diffraction limit. R ....Directly Imaging Exoplanet Birth. Exoplanet research has now entered a new era. Radial velocity and transit techniques have shown that planetary systems are extremely varied and complex, with the secrets to their taxonomy buried at the earliest epochs of planetary system evolution. This project will directly image these earliest stages of planetary formation through innovative algorithms that make best use of the largest infrared telescopes in the world, utilising their full diffraction limit. Resulting images will be combined with advanced collaborative modelling and the use of the latest Australian spectroscopic surveys and instrumentation, in order to unravel the secrets of planetary birth.Read moreRead less