2025-05-26 –, Main Conference Room
The Orion Nebula forms a cornerstone of our understanding of star formation, and it rightly is the first region we look at when commissioning almost any new telescope or instrument. The BN/KL nebula is the infrared nebula bright in lines of molecular hydrogen that lies behind the ionized Orion Nebula along the line of sight. John has led observations of this unique explosive source for several decades, and he proposed the leading models that challenge our ideas of how stars form. The current best model is that, around 500 years ago, three stars coexisted in a non-hierarchical multiple system that underwent a cataclysmic decay, which flung out both the stars and the nebula. I'll describe the observations, the proper motion measurements, the modeling work that justifies the hierarchical decay model, the hydrodynamics of the 'bullet' system, and the broader implications of this one dynamical interaction for theories of star formation.
