White dwarfs as tracers of cosmic, galactic, stellar & planetary evolution

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• Boris Gaensicke (Warwick)
• Thursday 22 February 2018, 16:00-17:00
• Sackler Lecture Theatre, IoA (tea at 3:30 pm).

If you have a question about this talk, please contact ma557.

All stars with masses ~< 10M_sun will end their lives as white dwarfs: Earth-sized, burnt-out stellar embers sustained by electron degeneracy. The steep slope of the stellar initial mass function implies that the overwhelming majority of all stars born in the Galaxy will evolve, or already have evolved, into white dwarfs.

The study of these stellar remnants links into a wide range of astrophysical topics, including the pathways towards supernova type Ia, the galactic star formation history, stellar mass loss, and the bulk composition of exo-planets. I will review the enormous progress in this research field that has been driven by large-scale surveys and new state-of-the art instrumentation, and provide an outlook on the scientific potential of ongoing and future projects including Gaia, DESI , SDSS-V, and LSST .

This talk is part of the Institute of Astronomy Colloquia series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cambridge Astronomy Talks
• Combined External Astrophysics Talks DAMTP
• Cosmology lists
• Cosmology, Astrophysics and General Relativity
• Institute of Astronomy Colloquia
• Institute of Astronomy Talk Lists
• Kavli Institute for Cosmology Talk Lists
• Priscilla
• Sackler Lecture Theatre, IoA (tea at 3:30 pm)

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