AAO Colloquium.
Thursday, 27th July - 3:30pm AAO Conference Room
Spectro-Astrometric Observations of Pre-Main-Sequence Binaries, Outflows, and Circumstellar Discs
Hiro Takami University of Hertfordshire
Recent experiments with spectro-astrometric observations of
pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars have shown that this technique can be used
to discover binary systems and disc gaps, and to study the kinematics of
outflows on spatial scales down to a few milli-arcsec. Spectro-astrometry
requires long slit spectra taken with a small spatial pixel scale, and
these spectra are analyzed by profile fitting in the spatial direction to
give the position of the source at each wavelength. The technique detects
any structure which is not perfectly symmetric about the source,
and a large number of photons provide a positional accuracy of
much less than the seeing size or the diffraction limit of the telescope.
I will present our results of new PMS binary systems, H-alpha and forbidden
line outflow towards RU Lupi, and a gap in its circumstellar disc
comparable to the size of the Jovian orbit.
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