Scientific Rationale
One of the research fields on which interferometry excels has turned out to be hot star astrophysics. Results often have been quickly adopted by the community, providing important quantitative constraints in frontline research topics:
- Several hot stars have been shown to be very rapidly rotating, in a regime where geometric deformation and gravity darkening become important.
- Stellar winds have been resolved, like those of Eta Car and Wolf-Rayet stars.
- Circumstellar disks have been tackled on a wide range of phenomena: Gaseous accretion disks around young Herbig stars, decretion disks around Be stars, and dusty disks around B[e] stars and again around Herbig stars.
While some of these results, like the critical rotation of Achernar and other stars, were a complete surprise, others, like the prolate wind of eta Car, have been anticipated or at least discussed by theoretical research, but still were hardly expected in the clear and unambiguous form they were finally observed.
The meeting aims at bringing together hot star and interferometry expertise, both observationally and theoretically, to review the progress made, as well as to to outline current problems in hot star research that are expected to benefit most from interferometric observations.
Oral sessions during the meeting will be held on:
- High angular resolution techniques
- The stars (including Cepheids)
- Stellar winds
- Circumstellar disks
- Hot binaries
- Explosive stars A
Poster session is foreseen.
The Thursday and Friday before the Meeting we will hold an interferometry primer, mainly intended for students, but open to all participants as long as there is space. The scope of the primer is to enable attendants without experience in interferometry first steps into judging the results presented during the meeting and to develop project ideas for discussion during the meeting. This session will take place on ESO's premises in Vitacura, Santiago. Confirmed lecturers include: O. Chesneau, C. Gil, R. Hills, J.B. Le Bouquin, A. Mérand, A. Quirrenbach, M. Schöller, G. van Belle
For further information, check http://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2009/IHOT09/ or contact us at ihot09@eso.org
The workshop is sponsored by ESO, the Universidad de Valparaíso, CTIO and NRAO.
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Scientific Rationale
