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Project Progress

Bo Reipurth has continued working on eruptive events in young Solar-like stars, the so called FUor and EXor eruptions. Observations of the prototype eruptive variable, FU Orionis itself, with the 8m Subaru telescope at Mauna Kea, has revealed that a nearby star is in fact a physical companion with characteristics similar to the T Tauri stars. Such events are important not only for the growth it provides to the young star, but also for processes of irradiation of disk material, which may give clues to the short-lived intense heating events that affected chondrites and aqueous alteration products in the early solar system. He and his collaborators have completed a multi-wavelength study of a new object named Persson’s Star, after the Swedish amateur astronomer who discovered it, and they demonstrated that it is one of the rare bona fide FU Orionis objects. Reipurth has continued work on the VYSOS (Variable Young Stars Optical Survey) robotic telescope, which will be mounted during August 2005 at the Mauna Loa observatory. Routine monitoring of tens of thousands of young low-mass stars will begin during the coming winter.