Leveraging a Zooniverse Discovery to Bridge Our Understanding of Low- and High-mass Star Formation

利用动物宇宙的发现来加深我们对低质量和高质量恒星形成的理解

• 批准号: 2307806
• 负责人: Kathryn Devine
• 金额: $ 41.95万
• 依托单位: The College of Idaho
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-08-15 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2307806&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Leveraging; Zooniverse; Discovery; Bridge; Our

Most stars form in groups called clusters, which contain stars of very different sizes and masses. Astronomers wish to understand the reasons that only some clusters form massive stars, which have masses more than eight times that of our Sun. The masses of stars in a cluster play an important role in how the cluster changes over time. For example, massive stars influence their surroundings with strong stellar winds and supernovae. Understanding the conditions that dictate the masses of forming stars is therefore important for understanding the ways that galaxies form and change over time. This project will address the question, “what properties of a gas cloud influence the masses of stars that will form in a cluster?” To do so, the project studies objects known as yellow-balls (YBs), which were first discovered by participants in a citizen-science project. The research team has developed an activity that provides introductory astronomy students with a way to contribute to the project and gain meaningful research experience. Outreach to seminaries, places of worship, planetaria, and media outlets will educate diverse public audiences about the findings from this project.The investigators will use a database of over 6,000 YBs identified by users of the Milky Way Project on the Zooniverse platform. YBs are signposts of young star-forming regions (SFRs) that trace a broad range of mass (10 – 10,000 solar masses) and luminosity (10–1,000,000 solar luminosities). YBs reveal many SFRs that are missing in existing catalogs, which tend to be biased towards the most massive and/or luminous regions. The investigators will produce a catalog of YB properties by cross-matching YBs with catalogs of star formation; determining distances to YBs from molecular cloud associations; determining physical properties of YB environments from catalog associations and our derived distances; and conducting multi-wavelength infrared (IR) photometry. Trends between YB colors, their physical properties, and their classifications will be identified through statistical analyses, modeling of spectral energy distributions, and the application of machine learning techniques. This research will elucidate the physical thresholds that delineate environments that do and do not produce massive stars and may additionally provide a transformative approach to classifying SFRs across the luminosity, mass, and age spectrum using only IR fluxes.This project is jointly funded by the Astronomy and Astrophysics Grants program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

大多数恒星形成称为星团的群体，其中包含大小和质量截然不同的恒星，天文学家希望了解为什么只有某些星团形成质量比太阳质量大八倍的恒星。因此，星团在星团如何随时间变化方面发挥着重要作用，例如，大质量恒星通过强烈的星风和超新星影响其周围环境，因此了解决定形成恒星质量的条件对于理解星系形成和变化的方式非常重要。随着时间的推移，该项目将解决。问题是，“气体云的哪些特性会影响星团中形成的恒星质量？”为此，该项目研究了被称为黄球（YB）的物体，这些物体最初是由公民项目的参与者发现的。研究团队开展了一项活动，为天文学入门学生提供了一种为该项目做出贡献并获得有意义的研究经验的方式，向神学院、礼拜场所、天文馆和媒体机构宣传研究成果。从这个项目中。调查人员将使用由 Zooniverse 平台上的银河系项目用户确定的 6,000 多个 YB 数据库，YB 是年轻恒星形成区域 (SFR) 的路标，可追踪广泛的质量（10 – 10,000 个太阳质量）和光度（10）。 –1,000,000 个太阳光度）揭示了现有目录中缺失的许多恒星形成率，这些恒星往往偏向于质量最大的恒星。研究人员将通过交叉匹配 YB 与恒星形成目录来生成 YB 属性目录；根据分子云关联确定 YB 环境的物理属性以及我们得出的距离；本研究将通过统计分析、光谱能量分布建模和机器学习技术的应用来确定 YB 颜色、其物理特性及其分类之间的趋势。阐明描述产生和不大量产生发光恒星的环境的物理阈值，并可能另外提供一种仅使用红外通量对恒星形成率在密度、质量和年龄谱上进行分类的变革性方法。该项目由天文学和天体物理学联合资助赠款计划和刺激竞争研究既定计划 (EPSCoR)。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的评估进行评估，认为值得支持影响审查标准。