"New Light on Young Stars: Spitzer's View of Circumstellar Disks"
held on
October 26-30 2008
in Pasadena, CA
New!
To view the conference proceedings, go here.
Thermal infrared images of conference attendees are now online. Thanks to Gordon Squires of the Spitzer Public Affairs Office for making these possible!
The unprecedented infrared sensitivity of the Spitzer Space Telescope has enabled major advances in the study of protostellar, protoplanetary, and debris disks. As Spitzer nears the transition from cryogenic to warm mission, it was an opportune time to assess and synthesize recent progress in our understanding of circumstellar disks and focus on the outstanding science questions for future work. At the meeting, results from Spitzer's surveys of circumstellar matter in the Milky Way were considered in the context of work at other wavelengths and underlying theory in the following topic areas:
- Surveys of star-formation regions
- Effects of environment and central object on young disk properties
- Structure of protostellar/protoplanetary disks and envelopes
- Spectroscopic diagnostics of circumstellar gas and dust
- Transition disks, disk evolution, and planet formation
- Frequency, structure, and theory of debris disks
The meeting was a milestone for our community in assessing how Spitzer has impacted these areas of astronomy.