My Thesis in 400 words: Dominic Couture

Dominic Couture. (Credit: É. Artigau)

Young moving groups (YMG) are associations of stars, mainly M dwarfs, formed at the same epoch by the collapse of a molecular cloud unique to every association and located in the solar neighbourhood, that share a common kinematics. They are ideal laboratories for the study of the last steps of stellar formation and direct imaging of exoplanets. The β Pictoris YMG is one of the youngest and closest YMGs, although its age is uncertain : ages found using isochrones or the lithium depletion boundary (21 − 24 Myr) are in disagreement with kinematic ages (∼ 12 Myr) found by tracing back trajectories of stars in the association with their full kinematics up to the epoch when the size of the YMG was minimal, which coincides with the epoch of stellar formation.