Close, Laird University of Hawaii Manoa AST 97-31576 Dr. Close and co-PI's will study the circumstellar disks around young stars in isolated dark clouds and cluster environments. They will use the new adaptive optics system developed at the University of Hawaii for their observations, achieving diffraction-limited images in the infrared. Their observational program includes a variety of young stellar objects to sample a range of environments : T Tauri stars in the Taurus-Auriga dark cloud, massive young Herbig Ae/Be stars, and nearby OB associations. Observations that detect disks (estimated to be roughly 50%) will permit determinations of the disk age, mass, and accretion rates. They will also model the scattered light disk images to place constraints on the nature of the dust. Their ultimate goal is to use a combination of direct imaging followed by modeling to elucidate the processes by which stars and their planetary systems condense out of the dusty cores of molecular clouds.
