Young Stars in the Tumultuous Gum Nebula

Alexandra Yep is a poet turned astronomer. Her first science course in college was quantum mechanics, and by some miracle that was not enough to stop her. She is now pursuing her Ph.D. at Georgia State University, researching young stars in a moderate radiation environment.

Stars are not born in isolation. They are born together in a cluster of hundreds or even thousands of stars. Each young star holds onto a disk of dusty, gaseous material for a few million years, called a protoplanetary disk for its ability to form planets. Ms. Yep seeks to answer these questions: How are stars and their young planets influenced by neighboring stars? How are clusters of stars influenced by neighboring clusters? © 2020

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