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Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic |
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Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic |
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Public lecture March 10, 2008
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Monday March 10, 2007 in new lecture room in Astronomical Institute Ondrejov I will talk about how I have been using numerical simulations to study two very different hydrodynamic problems, both of which are of great importance in astrophysics. Firstly, I will discuss simulations of star formation and the progress I have made in including the effects of feedback from massive stars. I will show simulations of the influence of ionising radiation and winds on molecular clouds and discuss two important problems in star formation – how are young star clusters dispersed, and to what extent might star formation by a self-triggering process? In the second half of my talk, I will show some recent work on the subject of stellar collisions. The Galactic Centre is one of the densest star clusters known and contains a inverse population of main sequence stars, giants, black holes and other stellar remnants. I will examine how collisions involving stars and stellar remnants affect the population of stars in the Galactic Centre and discuss in particular what we can learn about the volume of space within a few tenths of a parsec of the central supermassive black hole. Jiri Horak organizer |