Michigan Technological University
Department of Physics

is pleased to announce a colloquium

with

Richard Ignace

X-rays from Hot Stars

For years astronomers have known that luminous hot massive stars are sources of X-rays. Our own Sun is also a source of X-rays, through its hot corona, but massive stars are fundamentally different from the Sun in their structure, and so their detection as X-ray sources was initially surprising. However, the hot stars have fast dense winds, and the X-ray emission has been understood as arising from shock structures that naturally develop in these stellar outflows. To some extent, the hot star community had anticipated that the advent of the latest X-ray telescopes, Chandra and XMM-Newton, would confirm this model in detail. But that has not been the case so far. Are the theoretical models in error, or are the interpretative diagnostics inappropriate? I will discuss ideas of how best to resolve the questions that now beset the distributed wind-shock paradigm and consider alternate models for the X-ray production.

Friday, January 31, 2003

4:00 p.m., Fisher 101

Refreshments will be served

MTU | Physics | Colloquium