Categories 2006 Issue 1, UpFrontPosted on

Unprecedented Star Cluster

NESCAC Coach of the Year John Crooke reports: The New England Regional meet was the major highlight for both men’s and women’s teams in 2005. The women placed 7th in the toughest region in the country and the men placed 2nd to qualify as a team to the National Championships. The men ended up placing 14th at nationals. The men placed four runners on the All New England regional team and Owen Kiely was the New England Champion. Owen Kiely and Ellen Davis both attained All-America status by virtue of their finish at the National Championships. Cross country is a simple sport. It’s not running, it is racing. I am always telling my team that time doesn’t matter, place does. Cross country is a team sport. Most people think of it as an individual sport. A team is made up of seven runners. The first five runners score for the team. Each runner gets points based on his or her finish. If you place 5th, your team gets five points and if you place 27th, your team gets 27 points. You add up the points for your first five runners. The team with the lowest point total wins. Almost all of my athletes run all three seasons. The athletes need to train year round to be successful at the national level. NESCAC Cross Country on the women’s side it is without question the toughest conference in the country. The national team champion and runner up have come from the NESCAC the past five seasons. This fall was the first time in six years that the national champion was not a NESCAC school. Last fall our women’s team placed 5th in the NESCAC, 5th in the New England region and 14th in the country. The men’s side is very strong too but it is not the strongest in the country. I would say it is in the top three or four of the toughest conferences in the country.A 14-year study by Wesleyan researchers has revealed a phenomenon that may indicate the forming of new planets or perhaps even the existence of young planets orbiting young sun-like stars more than 1,600 light years away.

 

The observations were presented at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Washington, DC. on Jan. 11 by Professor of Astronomy William Herbst, Gabriel Roxby ’06, a Wesleyan undergraduate involved in the study, and Eric Williams, the systems manager of the Van Vleck observatory.

 

The Wesleyan team analyzed 500 stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) which is approximately 1,600 light years from earth. The data from the stars were collected by faculty and graduate and undergraduate students during a continuous 14-year period. The observations gave the astronomers the unique opportunity to track the long-term behavior of these stars concurrently with their subtle changes over short timescales.

 

The findings detail the discovery of a large number of young T Tauri stars with intriguing patterns in brightness variation over both short and long timescales. One star discovered became of particular interest because it seemed to grow brighter then fainter in a remarkably steady pattern with a possible period of about 10 years. This is an extremely long cycle, given that it rotates every 1.18 days.

 

One theory suggests the presence of a disk of dust and rock orbiting the star. Such a circumstellar disk would have to contain a large clump, such as a planet or proto-planet, in order to obscure the light of the star at certain times and not others. Another possible explanation for the brightness fluctuations may be that the star is experiencing magnetic cycles akin to those seen in our Sun, where its magnetic field becomes stronger and weaker over time, causing the total area covered by sunspots to grow and shrink. Another theory is that the phenomenon is being caused by the presence of a young fully-formed gas-giant planet akin to Jupiter.

 

Whatever the cause, the observations by the Wesleyan researchers may offer significant insights into our own solar system’s origins. The star they studied bears a strong resemblance to a younger version of the Sun, and it may be undergoing processes similar to those in the Sun’s early history. Further investigation may reveal whether these or other explanations can account for this star’s long and regular period.