In September 2015, Luke Keller will travel to the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope to conduct observations of young stars in a nearby galaxy that may be forming solar systems.In September 2015, Luke Keller will travel to the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope to conduct observations of young stars in a nearby galaxy that may be forming solar systems.
The SOAR telescope is located in southern Chile on an Andean mountain peak called Cerro Pachon. Rafael Ferreira '15 showed in his recent senior physics thesis that these stars are at the early stage of their evolution when nearby stars in our own Milky Way galaxy began to form planets. Keller will observe the more distant stars in infrared light to look for the telltale gas that would form large planets like Jupiter and Saturn.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20150701133337988