IAU Symposium 250: "Massive Stars as Cosmic Engines"
10-14 December 2007
Venue: Grand Hyatt, Kauai, Hawaii, USA
The theme of the conference, provisionally entitled "Massive Stars as Cosmic Engines" and developed by the IAU Working Group for Massive Stars, will be how massive stars shape the Universe from the nearby universe to high redshift galaxies. They form in starbursts, pollute the ISM, inject energy via their stellar winds and core-collapse SN, drive the ISM out of galaxies, polluting the IGM. The major observational constraints at high redshift Lyman break and DLA systems are direct detection of massive stars via their UV continua and stellar winds and indirectly via the ionized ISM. The symposium to-be-proposed will be multi-disciplinary.
Topics:
- New observational studies of massive stars (e.g. Spitzer, HST, FUSE, Chandra, ground-based 8m telescopes);
- New theoretical atmospheric developments including clumping, porosity and magnetic fields;
- Massive star evolution of single and binary stars in different environments including rotation and magnetic fields;
- Colliding wind effects in massive binaries, such as dust formation;
- Massive star interactions with the interstellar medium;
- End states of massive stars: Core-collapse Supernovae and Gamma Ray Bursts;
- Massive stellar populations in nearby galaxies;
- Super Star Clusters and Starbursts;
- Role of massive stars in Chemical Evolution of galaxies;
- Formation of first generation (Population III) stars, re-ionization and early enrichment;
- Lyman break, and damped Lyman alpha systems;
Weblink: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/iau250
Email: raphael.hirschi@unibas.ch