Thomas Robitaille

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Research

I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

I work on modeling and observations of star formation within the Milky Way. I am interested in exploring how the spectral energy distributions and the physical properties of young stellar objects are related, and to use this knowledge in combination with large surveys of star-formation regions to examine how the physical properties of young stars vary within a given regions, and from one region to another.



The above image shows a section from the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE) survey, which was completed by the Spitzer Space Telescope. You can browse the full-resolution images on this website. Using this dataset, I have carried out a census of young and evolved stars in the Galactic mid-plane.

In collaboration with Barbara Whitney, I have computed a large grid of model spectral energy distributions of young (< 10Myr) stars with circumstellar disks and envelopes, and have developed a tool to rapidly fit these models to a given set of observations. This allows us to understand which physical parameters - such as stellar, disk, or envelope parameters - can be constrained. The models and the fitting tool are both publicly available.

PhD Thesis

My PhD thesis is available here as a single (large) PDF file.

Publications (courtesy of ADS)

• All publications
• First author refereed publications
• First author non-refereed publications

Contact me

My contact details are available on the Radio and Geoastronomy staff list.