Unravelling the stars

Janet Drew is Imperial College's very own star detective.

Star detective, Janet Drew uses infra-red data, radio observations and optical techniques to unravel the role of a star's outflow

"Stars are there; how do they form? As their sizes increase, data are harder to gather which makes it more challenging. Through understanding, you can look at a galaxy and know its history and what it has become."

Professor Drew specialises in stellar astrophysics and enjoys the challenge which comes from monitoring her own part of the universe.

"You see some examples in the sky that you want to start working on so you try to understand them as individuals. From them, you learn the more general principles."

Professor Drew concentrates on the formation of young, massive, luminous stars - the brightest in the night sky. Short-lived, they explosively collapse to create supernovas which shape the entire environment around them. In astronomical terms, this is a quick process, taking between one and 10 million years.

She also unravels the role of outflow - matter which is lost during star formation - by working from infrared data and using radio observations and optical techniques.

"Whereas ideas exist about how low mass stars like our own sun form, how stars 10 times bigger form is much less understood. We want to know how they form and how conditions for their creation were set. That's something we really don't know yet."

Professor Drew, a physics and geology graduate from the University of Durham, took a PhD in astrophysics at University College, London. Her research continued at the University of Cambridge and Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colorado before lecturing for eight years in Oxford. She joined Imperial's astrophysics group in 1995.

"As a child at secondary school, I was interested in physical geography. I loved to read about the origin of land formation and the problems of shaping environments using physical principles appealed enormously.

"The charms of astronomy keep you going when you're dealing with paperwork and administration. Being able to think about and look at pictures of galaxies while wondering what they mean, is what it's all about."