Hot Dust within HII Regions

This project utilizes new observations, taken with the Herschel Space Observatory, to understand the role of large molecules (called “dust” within the astrophysical community) around massive stars in our Galaxy. This is useful because dust can impact how stars react back on their environment as they age, and so such large molecules can help alter, in the long term, the distribution of gas in the Galaxy, and perhaps impact the rate of star formation, as well. For this project, Dr. John Everett is working with Dr. Christer Watson at Manchester College. Dr. Watson will reduce the data and will utilize a computer program written by Dr. Everett; this program numerically solves the equations of the evolution of gas & dust around massive stars and generates predictions of how the area around massive stars will appear in observations; by matching this program’s output to observations for a variety of parameters, we can learn more about how important dust is in the evolution of stars and the Galaxy. In the course of this work, Dr. Everett will configure the program to match the needs of the data analysis, and upgrade and modify the code as appropriate to the observations from Herschel.