A variability study of young stars - Periodicity, hot spots, accretion and early evolution at the time of planet formation University of Dundee

Programme Structure

Programme include:

• Time-resolved observations are therefore the only way to access these tiny spatial scales. In this project, we will "use time to map space" in young stars via a variability survey of populous clusters in the Northern Hemisphere in an unprecedented effort to study the properties of thousands of stars aged 1-5 Myr using data from the Javalambre telescope and the North-PHASE international legacy project (led by A. Sicilia-Aguilar). 

• The successful candidate will work on the identification and calibration of the data for different star forming regions, in order to derive a statistical study of the variability properties of the stars in the cluster and their causes (accretion, occultations by the inner disk, hot and cold spots) and how these evolve in few-years timescales.