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Spotlight on research: A star is born – but how?
Spotlight on research: A star is born – but how?

Spotlight on research: A star is born – but how?

Professor Turlough Downes, Astrophysicist and Professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences at DCU and Director of the Centre for Astrophysics and Relativity (C-fAR) speaks to Spotlight on Research.

You research how stars and planets are made. When did you first become interested in space?

“I loved looking at constellations of stars when I was a little kid – I remember looking out the window at them when I couldn’t sleep - and after I studied theoretical physics at university I went to the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, where I did a PhD on how stars form.”

What does your research look at today?

“I am trying to figure out more about the environments where stars and planets form in space.

Stars and the planets that orbit them form in cold, dense clouds of dust and gas out in space called ‘star-forming regions’.

I look at these regions to see how stars and planets are born.”

Where are these star factories?

“There are many of them about! One of the regions I look at is quite easy to pinpoint in the night sky – it is just about visible within the constellation of Orion, just at the sword.”

How do you gather information about how stars form?

“I use a mixture of theory, observation and simulation to figure out the characteristics of star-forming regions.

The theory is what we can work out about the physics of how stars form, and we develop that over time, helped by observations from telescopes.

Then we can push our knowledge even further by building simulations to test out lots of different ideas about what might be going on.”

How do you build those simulations?

“I use information that telescopes pick up about these star-forming regions to inform models we make to help us better understand the interplay of aspects like the temperature of the star-forming cloud, how dense the dust and gas is and how magnetic fields operate.

In order to explore that I write code to run these simulations, often using European supercomputers available through an EU organisation called PRACE.

There is a huge amount of computation involved - the equivalent of using several hundred thousand laptops at the same time.”

Why are magnetic fields so important?

“It’s because we think magnetic fields can affect turbulence in these star-forming regions.

Star-forming clouds contain a type of charged gas called plasma, and magnetic fields change how the plasma moves around and so affect how material in stars comes together.

We believe they are actually critical in the formation of stars and planets.”

You look at planet formation too – tell us about that.

“We know a lot less about how planets form than we do about star formation, which makes it a really exciting area to work in.

The current thinking is that planets form in discs of material around stars, where the physics is fascinating and complex, but we need lots more observations from telescopes to increase our knowledge of how planets are made.”

DCU has built up a strong suite of researchers in the Centre for Astrophysics and Relativity. What kinds of aspects do you look at as a group?

“We have a wide range of interests in the group – from how stars and planets and black holes form to what is happening on planets outside of our own solar system and how we can combine signals we can pick up from space to build up a better picture of what is going on.

We also have research going on into general relativity and the physics of gravitational waves.

Astrophysics research has been gathering pace in recent years in DCU.

It’s exciting to work together, we can learn a lot from each other’s methods and approaches.

Now that the government announced in the budget that Ireland will be joining the European Southern Observatory (ESO) it is a wonderfully exciting time for astrophysics not only in DCU, but in Ireland as a whole.”

What do you like to do when you are not researching or teaching?

“I really love music and I’ve played in bands since I was a teenager.

I took up the guitar when I was 14 and I still play a lot and I enjoy jamming with friends.”

You also take part in a lot of public outreach events about space – what will you be doing during Maths Week?

"We host an event in the Helix each year and this year we are featuring Andrew Jeffrey (a ‘mathemagician’!), for primary school kids.

We usually get around 1200 people attending.

Recently C-fAR ran a really popular evening of public talks as part of Space Week 2017, so researchers from our group will be more focused on going along to various talks during the week.

I'll be sticking with my roots in astrophysics and I'm interested in going to the talk about Hamilton, one of the Irish scientific greats, in Dunsink Observatory on Wednesday."