Carbon Stars: Dr. Katharina Lodders
March 16, 2001

Abstract for talk:
"Carbon Stars", an illustrated lecture by Dr. Katharina Lodders of Washington University, will be featured at the March meeting of the St. Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, March 16, in McDonnell Hall, Room 162, on the Washington University campus. McDonnell Hall is accessible from Forsyth Boulevard via Houston Way. The presentation, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge. Carbon stars are red giant stars, approaching the last stages of their evolution. They are major producers of the element carbon, seeding with their powerful stellar winds the giant dust clouds from which new stars, and their planets, form. These stars are the primary source of the carbon that forms the building blocks of life on Earth and , quite possibly , of life on other worlds. The carbon stars manufacture dust grains that are later trapped in meteorites. Dr. Lodders will explain how we study these giant stars with both the telescope and the microscope. Dr. Katharina Lodders is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the McDonnell Center For the Space Sciences at Washington University in Saint Louis. She received her Doctorate from the Max Planck Institut fur Chemie in 1991. Her research interests center on the evolution of the solar system, particularly the processes that lead to the formation of the sun, the Earth, and the planets. In addition to over forty scientific publications, she co-authored The Planetary Scientist's Companion, a highly regarded reference work for professional planetary geologists and astronomers.

"Carbon Stars"

Review: by Jim Small

An excellent talk by Dr. Lodders as listed below. Perhaps the most striking aspect to me is the similarity of presolar grains to hailstones. For more information about carbon stars and presolar grains, there are several web sites you may find of help. All of these will be added to the SLAS links page.

The featured speaker for the talk on Carbon Stars was KATHARINA LODDERS, Senior Research Scientist, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, MO. For more information about Dr. Lodders, click on the link below: http://epsc.wustl.edu/admin/people/lodders.html

For the Bruce Fegley group in the planetary chemistry laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis, which includes Dr. Lodders go to the following web site: http://solarsystem.wustl.edu/
Click on current projects then experiments and scroll down to find more information about the chemistry of gas grains of solar nebulae.

Another web site that was recommended by Dr. Lodders was the Astronomers Bazaar. At this site, the Strasbourg astronomical Data Center (CDS) collects and distributes astronomical data catalogues, related to observations of stars and galaxies, and other galactic and extragalactic objects. Catalogues about the solar system bodies and atomic data are also included. The Astronomers Bazaar may be found at
http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/htbin/myqcat3/

http://presolar.wustl.edu/ This is the home page for the web site of the Laboratory for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. This is one of two pages recommended by Christine Jennings during by Dr. Lodders' Carbon Star talk. It has online versions of the work describing how presolar grains were sliced and studied. Click on research once you reach the home page to see these works, including some nice photographs. The other site Christine mentioned is the Lunar and Planetary Institute web site: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/ This site is also very nice, including research pages with any information you would care to know about the solar system, including a 3D tour of the solar system if you happen to have red-blue stereo glasses.

A final source mentioned at the talk is the Washington University astronomy source page at: http://library.wustl.edu/~physics/astro.htm This site has links to everything astronomical that might be of interest, including international astronomy clubs.

Enjoy the tour of the solar system!! Please email me below if you have additional suggestions.
Jim Small