 Sumner Starrfield Regents' Professor of Astrophysics School of Earth and Space Exploration P. O. Box 871404 Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona 85287-1404 USA E-mail:sumner.starrfield at asu.edu Telephone: (480) 965-7569 Education and Degrees: |
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Current Projects
I am currently using the Hubble Space Telescope to obtain
new images of the V838 Mon light echo in order to obtain a three
dimensional model of the circumstellar dust surrounding the central
star. I am using SWIFT to obtain X-ray spectra of a number
of novae such as V723 Cas which has recently been detected in
X-rays. I am using SPITZER to obtain infrared spectra of a number
of recent novae. I am doing calculations of the accretion of
material at high rates onto luminous white dwarfs and exploriing the
effects of addtitional nuclear reaction rates (such as the pep reaction
which was not included in previous studies) on the nova outburst.
I am studying the effects of different metallicity of the
accreting material on the evolution and properties of the nova outburst.
I am also studying helium accretion onto white dwarfs in order to
better understand the 2000 outburst of V445 Pup.
| This
is
an artists drawing
of a Cataclysmic Variable Binary star system which
contains a large cool star that fills its
Roche Lobe (Restricted Problem of Three Bodies) and is losing mass
through the inner Lagrangian Point into the
Lobe surrounding the
other star which is a white dwarf. The material spirals in
through an accretion disk
before falling
onto the white dwarf. The compact star can also be a neutron star
or black hole and in that case it is called a Low Mass X-ray Binary. |
This is the optical light curve showing the brightness of Nova V723 Cas which erupted in 1995 and exhibited an extremely unusual set of peaks around maximum brightness. We have recently observed it with the SWIFT satellite and find that it is still emitting in X-rays. |
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