The Astronomical League of the Philippines is inviting everyone to our first ALP Astronomy Experts Speaker Series webinar for 2026, on “The Birth of Stars in the Milky Way” by the noted theoretical astrophysicist, Dr. Bruce Elmegreen. This will be held on January 25, 2026 (Sunday) at 9:30 a.m. Philippine Standard Time (January 24, Saturday, 8:30 p.m. EST).
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, forms stars in dense interstellar clouds that are obscured by dust in visible light but transparent in the infrared. These clouds condense from rarefied interstellar gas and then cool and contract into a hierarchy of turbulent structures with star formation in multiple cores. Many of these newborn stars have gas disks with fast jets of molecules and atoms flowing out along their axes, while giant planets form inside within a few million years. When the number of stars in a core gets large enough, their collective heating and pressurization of the surrounding cloud breaks it apart to stop the process but often compresses more gas slightly further away when it does this, continuing star formation in pillar-like structures for several more generations. In this talk, observations of star formation covering a wide range of scales will be illustrated with results from the most modern telescopes.Dr. Bruce Elmegreen received his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Princeton University in 1975 and was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University from 1975 to 1978.After six years in the faculty of Columbia University in New York, Dr. Elmegreen joined the Research Division of IBM at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., where he worked from 1984 to 2023. For most of this time, he conducted theoretical research on interstellar turbulence, star formation, and galactic structure, and has more than 430 refereed publications and 45,000 citations. In his last four years at IBM, he co-led a Materials Discovery Program with around 50 researchers in a Future of Climate initiative. In the field of nanotechnology, Dr. Elmegreen designed and modeled magnetic materials and devices, phase change material structures, piezoelectronic devices and circuits, and gas separation equipment, obtaining 26 patents with 12 more pending.
Register now for this free Zoom online talk using this link –
or by scanning the QR code below using your cellphone camera.
After registration, please check your registered e-mail for the Zoom meeting link. See you!