Astronomy
Subpages:
I have finished my PhD work in astronomy at Utrecht University. At the end of January 2007 defended my thesis with the title ‘Stellar evolution on the borderline of white dwarf and neutron star formation’ under supervision of prof. dr N. Langer. More about my thesis will follow shortly. At the moment I work as a postdoc at the Astronomical Institute in Utrecht, to finish some projects.
Research:
The main goal of my research is to investigate the pre-supernova evolution of massive AGB-stars, i.e. stars with masses between 8 and 12 solarmasses. At first sight this may be a bit strange, because AGB-stars are thought to be the progenitors of white dwarfs, but there is strong observational evidence that the most massive ones are able to explode during their AGB phase. These stars are thought to undergo the classical AGB evolution before they collapse: they are likely to evolve through thermal pulses, dredge up carbon into their envelopes, form neutron seeds and perform neutron capture nucleosynthesis in their helium shells and lose the main part of their hydrogen-rich envelope to a stellar wind. At the end of their AGB evolution, they develop a strongly degenerate ONeMg core and at a critical density, electron captures on Mg24 and Ne20 lead to core collapse.
More can be found in my thesis and other publications. See Publications
See here for the talks, lectures and workshops I gave over the years (scientific as well as popular)
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