Ms. Tatiana Pavlidou, Mr. Sam Pearson and Dr. Aleks Scholz

University of St. Andrews, UK

Going wide and deep: the quest for a census of young stars and brown dwarfs

Abstract: Surveys are the foundation of all disciplines in astrophysics. In star formation in particular, we often rely too much on so-called prototypes which are not necessarily good representatives, or on small-scale, strongly biased samples. In this team seminar we present results from different survey projects carried out by the star formation group in St Andrews, which include large-scale surveys using Gaia and WISE, deep brown dwarf surveys with 4-8m class telescopes and multi-object spectroscopy, as well as preparations for a JWST program to find free-floating planets. After a short introduction on the work in our group, Tatiana Pavlidou will talk about her Gaia-powered wide-field survey of the Perseus cloud, which led to the discovery of five new clustered groups of young stars. Sam Pearson will show his ongoing ultradeep survey in the benchmark cluster NGC2264, here he has established the first confirmed sample of brown dwarfs.