Here is the current schedule for the Spring 2026 semester

 

 

 

 

 

Planet Formation in the Line of Fire: The Fate of Disks in 
Massive Stellar Clusters 

Ryan Boyden (University of Virginia)

Planets form in protoplanetary disks around young stars, and the properties of emerging planetary systems depend intimately on the structure, composition, and evolution of their natal disks. With the commissioning of high angular resolution radio interferometers like the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), we can now probe the bulk dust and gas reservoirs of disks that reside in the most common sites of star formation: massive stellar clusters. This talk will provide an overview of what we have learned about planet formation by observing the nearest star-forming clusters with radio interferometers. Observational data from my ALMA and VLA programs, together with previous imaging from the Hubble Space Telescope, point to a scenario in which the initial conditions of planet formation are shaped profoundly by the stellar birth environment. Finally, as we look towards the future, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is revealing the relationship between planet formation and star cluster environments in unprecedented detail. I will showcase my rich JWST datasets covering ~100 planet-forming disks — the largest and most ambitious dataset of its kind — and discuss how this dataset will provide transformative insight into the compositional diversity of exoplanets and the origin of life in the Solar System. 

 

Zoom Link: https://nmtedu.zoom.us/j/97572348560pwd=OLHjHRLKVCeL1LnUsxGTFMLrDJagQv.1

Meeting Id: 975 7234 8560; Passcode: 677943