Adjunct Research Fellow; University of Hong Kong
asiaa.sinica.edu.twMy work spans the Sun to the most distant galaxies, and has provided crisp answers to questions at the frontier of research in a number of different fields in astrophysics. A few examples are: (1) What do other stars look like? Our image of the red supergiant Betelgeuse shows that this star has a highly extended and asymmetric atmosphere; (2) Unlike our Sun, most stars form as members of binary or multiple systems: how such systems form is one of the most important unanswered questions in star formation. Our observations of L1551 IRS5 provides the first direct evidence that multiple protostellar systems can form through the fragmentation of their surrounding molecular gas condensation, as is most commonly invoked by contemporary theoretical models. (3) The mechanism(s) that triggers luminous nuclear activity in galaxies has been an outstanding mystery ever since the discovery of quasars in the early 1960's. Our observations of active spiral galaxies in atomic hydrogen gas reveal that, tidal interactions is the dominant mechanism for initiating events that lead to relatively luminous nuclear activity in local spiral galaxies.
