Tyler Bourke: A Star is Born

Dr Tyler Bourke is an Astronomer at the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), headquartered at Jodrell Bank, where his areas of focus are the “Cradle of Life” and “Our Galaxy”. He has over 26 years of professional astronomy experience and more than 100 refereed scientific publications. After obtaining his PhD in Australia, Tyler moved to the US and worked on programmes with the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Submillimeter Array, while at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He moved to the UK in 2013. Tyler’s scientific interests lie in the area of low-mass star formation (like our Sun), and he has been hooked on astronomy since the 3rd Grade, growing up under the beautiful southern skies.

Talk: A Star is Born

Our Sun is a little more massive than an average star, but is otherwise fairly normal, and is currently in middle-age. It was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, and has about 5 billion years left to live. But how was it formed? How are stars, in general, formed? Stars are still being born today, so by studying young stars we are figuring out how our Sun, and our Solar System, came to be. Like us, young stars grow quickly, spew out material from both ends, and are quite rambunctious, before they settle into middle-age.