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University of Michigan Department of Astronomy1034 Dennison Building500 Church Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Office Location(s): 1034 Dennison Phone: 734.615.6139 Fax: 734.763.6317 xche@umich.edu
BS, Tsinghua University/China | Advisor: John Monnier
Interferometric view of rapidly rotating stars and circumstellar disks
Xiao Che and his advisor are upgrading the CHARA telescope array to zoom in on hot stars and their environments with the first six-beam infrared interferometric combiner. Che has upgraded the hardware on MIRC (the Michigan Infrared Combiner) to improve its efficiency and data quality and is now working on an Adaptive Optics upgrade to CHARA’s telescopes to improve their sensitivity. These instruments are allowing him to image and model stellar surface structures and their environments with very high angular resolution. He is looking at how rotation affects stars’ geometry, surface temperature, intensity distributions — and ultimately their evolution. He is also studying the structure and intensity distribution of circumstellar disks and how they vary over time. Using the infrared interferometric data and spectroscopic data from other collaborators, Che is helping to constrain models of disks around hot main sequence stars and Young Stellar Objects.
Planet formation, spotted stars, contact binaries, new technologies that can be applied to astronomy.
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