The Pleiades Open Cluster (M45).

Welcome to Karen Bjorkman's Home Page

Professor of Astronomy
Ritter Astrophysical Research Center
Department of Physics & Astronomy
University of Toledo
Toledo, OH 43606-3390


Thinking about a career in Physics or Astronomy?  Here are some useful links you can investigate!

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Click on the chart for more details.  (Thanks to Attilla Danko for providing the clock and Alan Rahill of the CMC for providing the forecast!) 

Teaching

2004-05 academic year:

    Fall 2004: PHYS 1910; Spring 2005: ASTR 2340, ASTR 4820

Research

Here at Ritter Observatory we have an active hot star group, with interests in many aspects of hot star research. For more information, see the Hot Star Group Web Page. My own research interests are in the circumstellar envelopes of massive hot stars, including mass-loss, stellar winds, disk formation, and the mechanisms which produce these characteristics. I use multi-wavelength observations & techniques (spectroscopy, spectropolarimetry, and imaging) to investigate these areas. I am especially interested in rapidly rotating hot stars (Oe/Be stars), Herbig Ae/Be pre-main-sequence stars, and OB supergiants. For the official blurb on my research, see my departmental research description page. You can also read a little background information about my research here.

Here are a few recent publications:

For a complete list of publications, see my bibliography.

Past Projects

WUPPE

I was a Co-Investigator for the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment (WUPPE), which was one of 3 ultraviolet telescopes making up the Astro Observatory. The other two instruments were the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT) and the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT). The Astro-1 mission was flown on the space shuttle Columbia (STS-35) in December 1990, and the Astro-2 mission was flown on the space shuttle Endeavour (STS-67) in March 1995.

For an overview of what hot stars were observed with WUPPE on Astro-2, here is a Postscript version of a paper for the proceedings of a conference on Polarimetry of the Interstellar Medium is also available. (If you don't have a Postscript viewer and would like one, you can find one at the Ghostscript Home Page).

We're currently working on models of the Oe/Be stars to interpret the data in terms of the physics of the circumstellar envelopes. The data are from WUPPE and from the Halfwave Polarimeter (HPOL) in use at PBO and WIYN. We're using Monte Carlo techniques to do the numerical work for the modeling. This work is being done in collaboration with Jon Bjorkman and Kenneth Wood. 


Universe in the Park

In a "former life" at the University of Wisconsin, I founded an outreach program called Universe in the Park, which was carried out (very successfully!) in the state parks of Wisconsin during the summer of 1996. Although I am no longer directly involved, the program has continued through all summers since founding as well, under the auspices of the UW Dept. of Astronomy and Space Astronomy Laboratory.
 
 

Want to know more?

Web-based versions of my Curriculum Vitae and Bibliography are available for your information.

Pointers to Other Useful Sites

I'm an astronomer, so of course I like to check out Astronomy Sites

Need info? Try these News/Weather/Sports Sites

Spare time? What spare time? Still, here are links to Other Interests

Where to find me...

Dr. Karen S. Bjorkman
Professor of Astronomy

Ritter Observatory
Dept. of Physics & Astronomy
University of Toledo
Toledo, OH 43606-3390 USA

phone: (419) 530-2613
FAX: (419) 530-5167 or 530-2723

office: Ritter Observatory, Room 204
email: karen@astro.utoledo.edu
www: http://ardbeg.astro.utoledo.edu/~karen/ksbhome.html (this page)

Last updated 23 Nov 2004

If you have comments, questions, or suggestions regarding these pages, please send email. Thanks!

Karen S. Bjorkman (karen@astro.utoledo.edu)