Poster abstract details
Gaia Study on the Formation of Intermediate Mass Stars
Abstract
The intermediate mass Herbig Ae/Be stars are young stars approaching the Main Sequence and are key to understanding the differences in formation mechanisms between magnetic low mass stars and the non-magnetic high mass stars. Almost all known Herbig Ae/Be stars have Gaia parallaxes which allowed us to derive their luminosities and locations in the HR diagram.
In combination with other catalogues, we studied the characteristics of the infrared excesses, of the photometric variability and of the Halpha emission line typical of these Pre-Main Sequence objects; resulting in the largest homogeneous analysis of these sources to date and a step forward to achieve a major increase of known objects of the class. Gaia Data Release 2 has improved and greatly increased the number of parallaxes available, which also allows us to search and identify new Herbig Ae/Be stars using the HR diagram. We present our plan to discover new Herbig Ae/Be stars by first constructing HR diagrams with all the sources within different star forming regions of interest and then combining the position in the HR diagram with the previously described characteristics. Different statistical learning techniques have to be applied to deal with such a large amount of data and find the region in the parameter space populated just by Herbig Ae/Be stars and without other objects. This in turn will allow us to study the Pre-Main Sequence evolution as a function of mass, age and location in the galaxy to an unprecedented precision.
In combination with other catalogues, we studied the characteristics of the infrared excesses, of the photometric variability and of the Halpha emission line typical of these Pre-Main Sequence objects; resulting in the largest homogeneous analysis of these sources to date and a step forward to achieve a major increase of known objects of the class. Gaia Data Release 2 has improved and greatly increased the number of parallaxes available, which also allows us to search and identify new Herbig Ae/Be stars using the HR diagram. We present our plan to discover new Herbig Ae/Be stars by first constructing HR diagrams with all the sources within different star forming regions of interest and then combining the position in the HR diagram with the previously described characteristics. Different statistical learning techniques have to be applied to deal with such a large amount of data and find the region in the parameter space populated just by Herbig Ae/Be stars and without other objects. This in turn will allow us to study the Pre-Main Sequence evolution as a function of mass, age and location in the galaxy to an unprecedented precision.