Welcome to the House of Jorick Vink
I am an Academic Research Fellow in the Astrophysics group of Keele University.
My prime Research interests include mass loss from massive stars as a function of metallicity, line polarimetry to
probe circumstellar geometries in massive evolved as well as young stars (as to study star formation),
and in Horizontal Branch morphologies.
- Mass Loss & Stellar Cosmology
Mass Loss is the most important "driver" of stellar evolution in massive stars.
I have developed on the basis of Monte Carlo simulations
of radiation-driven winds in realistic stellar atmospheres. The models are in good agreement
with observational mass loss indicators over a wide range of stellar parameters. The final goal
is to predict mass loss over the entire evolution of a massive star at all cosmological epochs.
- The circumstellar geometries around Young Stars
Star formation is still poorly understood. Although astronomers seem to understand
the basic formation of solar-type stars reasonably well, the formation of more massive
stars is one of the major remaining problems in astrophysics.
Young massive stars are rare and distant, and information on their circumstellar environments from which
they have formed is particularly meagre. To study the geometry of this circumstellar environment the
tool of spectropolarimetry is arguably the most powerful tool
to probe the innermost regions around young stars. For instance, our spectropolarimetry
of the earliest Herbig Be stars provides the best evidence to date that these
massive pre-main sequence stars are surrounded by circumstellar disks!
- IPHAS: The Halpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane
Contact details
Email: jsv (domain: astro_keele_ac_uk)
Phone: +44 (0)1782 583329
Room LJ2-10, Lennard Jones Laboratories
| Last updated: Jan 20, 2006 |
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