Postdoctoral Fellowship: AAPF: Stellar and substellar magnetospheric physics

Clara Brasseur is awarded an Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at the Lowell Observatory. Brasseur will combine individual studies of low-mass stars and ultracool dwarf stars to build scaling relations between stellar type and age and magnetic field strength and geometry. For the education component of this project, Brasseur will create a sonification-based planetarium show for the Lowell Observatory Discovery Center and start a curated collection of astronomical software learning materials suitable for use in the undergraduate classroom.

The course of an individual star’s development is determined not only by its size, mass, and luminosity, but also by such properties as magnetic field strength and structure, stellar rotation rate, and chemical composition. In turn, these properties are all interdependent: determining the role of any one without reference to others is impossible. Brasseur will use scaling relations she derives to model stars as they change through time, developing a framework to understand the connections between magnetosphere characteristics and observable properties.

Furthermore, the work will inform present and future studies of stellar variability, developing a framework to differentiate different sources of stellar flux variation.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.