Friday 5 February 1999 at 2:30pm

Richard Webb - UCLA

"The Nearest Known Recent Star Formation Site - TW Hydrae"

ABSTRACT: "We report the discovery of five T Tauri star systems, two of which are resolved binaries, in the vicinity of the nearest known region of recent star formation: the TW Hydrae Association. The newly discovered systems display the same signatures of youth (namely high X-ray flux, large Li abundance and strong chromospheric activity) and the same proper motion as the original five members. These similarities firmly establish the group as a bona fide T Tauri association, unique in its proximity to Earth and its complete isolation from any known molecular clouds. At an age of ~10 Myr and a distance of ~50 pc, the association members are excellent candidates for future studies of circumstellar disk dissipation and the formation of brown dwarfs and planets." See http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~webbr/TWA_home.html for preprints of this work.