Tuesday, 17 February, 1998

R104 (Conf. room) of the Subaru Telescope, Hilo

Prof. Don W. Kurtz - University of Cape Town

"New Developments in Asteroseismology"

10:30am - tea 11:00am - talk

ABSTRACT:"With the great success of helioseismology in probing the interior of the sun, attention has been turned to asteroseismology to probe the interiors of a variety of stars. In this talk I will briefly discuss the technique of asteroseismology, then show what we are doing with it. We will look at HIPPARCOS observations which have confirmed theoretical predictions which were actually made *before* the observations. We will see the new EC 14026 stars - remarkable, nearly H-free, sub-dwarf B stars with pulsation periods of only minutes. We'll see in some detail how seismology is being used to learn more about the most peculiar stars in the sky, the Ap stars - including the strangest one of all, Przybylski's star. There will be discussion of the (now resolved) 51 Peg planet/pulsation controversy, white dwarfs with Oxygen "snow", g-modes in F stars, element separation and its effect on solar neutrinos and solar structure, white dwarf structure, pulsation driving in EC 14026 stars, and the age of globular clusters. Asteroseismology has wide implications in many fields of astronomy. This talk will give a broad overview of those implications."

NOTE: THIS IS THE FIRST JOINT SUBARU/JAC SEMINAR!