The Role of Environment in Star and Planet Formation

Abstract

Most stars and planets form in clusters/associations with hundreds of low-mass stars and their associated planetary systems forming alongside each high-mass star. Radiation, energy, and momentum from the highest mass stars permeate these regions and play a central role in shaping the demographics and habitability of exoplanets. Ionizing radiation from high-mass stars truncates and destroys protoplanetary disks around nearby low-mass stars, reducing the timescale for planet formation. At the same time, short-lived radioactive elements synthesized in the death of these same high-mass stars may regulate the water budget of Earth-like (terrestrial) planets. As the exoplanet community steps ever closer to detecting Earth-analogs, there is an urgent need to study the more distant and higher mass environments where the majority of stars/planets form and test how it impacts the demographics of exoplanets. I will discuss new results from JWST and the on-going surveys I am leading to constrain the role of environment in shaping the outcome of star and planet formation.

Bio

Dr. Megan Reiter grew up in sunny southern California without ever learning to surf and managed to graduate from high school without taking a single physics class. While an undergraduate, an introductory astronomy class for non-majors proved decidedly more interesting than expected, leading her to earn degrees in physics and astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley. Since obtaining her PhD from the University of Arizona (thesis advisor: Nathan Smith), she has held fellowships at the University of Michigan, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in beautiful Edinburgh, Scotland, and the European Southern Observatory headquarters in Garching, Germany. Since moving to Rice University, she's been having a great time working on data from the James Webb Space Telescope and eating immoderate amounts of tortilla chips.