Astrophysics Seminar
Understanding stellar feedback in our Galaxy through observations and unsupervised machine learning
Speaker: Maitraiyee Tiwari (University of Maryland, USA)
Stellar feedback is one of the most important ingredients in the evolution of the interstellar medium (ISM). Massive stars inject immense amounts of energy into their surroundings through stellar winds (mechanical feedback) and through emitting energetic photons (radiative feedback). Mechanical energy input pushes the gas into different physical structures and the radiative energy input heats up the surrounding medium by ionizing and dissociating various species. Quantifying stellar feedback is crucial to understand its impact on various physical and chemical processes in the ISM. FEEDBACK is a recent observational survey performed using the SOFIA telescope to observe C+ in 11 sources of our Galaxy. I will present the first results of this survey emphasizing the need of multi-wavelength observations and machine learning to understand our Galaxy better.