Once dismissed as an astronomical backwater, the study of star clusters
now stands at a great cross-roads of most of the major streams of
astronomical research: cosmology, galactic evolution, star formation,
stellar evolution, pulsar astronomy, X-ray astronomy, stellar dynamics
and computational astronomy. In this talk, Heggie will explain what
star clusters are, and why they are important, and then focus on their
dynamics. Containing about a million stars each, every star cluster is
a real-life simulation of a gravitational many-body problem. Complicated
as that sounds, physical arguments go a long way towards an outline
solution.
Douglas Heggie is
Professor of Mathematical Astronomy at the School of Mathematics and
the Maxwell Institute for Mathematical Sciences,
University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
He spent 10 years at Trinity College, Cambridge, as an
undergraduate, PhD student and Research Fellow, before moving back to
Edinburgh. He has been researching stellar dynamics for about 40 years.
His particular interests are in the fast computer modelling of rich
star clusters.
To begin viewing slides, click on the first slide below. (Or, view as pdf.)