Coconino Astronomical Society: Herbig-Haro Objects – The Smoking Guns of Early Star Formation

As protostars coalesce in the cold dark cores of molecular clouds, they spin up to rapid rotation rates while the remnant material from star formation collapses into dusty gaseous circumstellar disks. The interactions between disks and strong young stars magnetic fields spawn energetic gas jets and outflows that subsequently slam into the interstellar medium, exciting the cloud material. Thus observations of these shocked regions, the Herbig-Haro objects, are superb tracers of early star formation. I will describe recent advances by my team in identifying, cataloging, and understanding these objects in the nearby star forming regions

Presented by Lisa Prato – Lowell Observatory

Lisa Prato grew up in the Boston area and attended the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she completed undergraduate degrees in Astronomy and in English and discovered the world of scientific research. After another year at UMass as a non-degree graduate student, Prato moved to Colombia, South America, and worked for 3 years as a professor in the Department of Physics at the Universidad Industrial de Santander in the city of Bucaramanga, teaching classes in astronomy and astrophysics and working toward a masters degree in Physics. Prato returned to the US to complete a PhD in Astronomy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, followed by two postdoctoral positions at UCLA, one with the Nobel Laureate Dr. Andrea Ghez and one with Dr. Ian McLean. Prato is a Tenured Astronomer on the science faculty at Lowell Observatory and an Adjunct Professor at Northern Arizona University; she works with postdocs, undergraduates, interns, and gradate students on young binary stars and planet formation.