ATNF Marsfield Lecture Theatre

Dr Eduardo L. Martin

Problems and Prospects in Substellar Astronomy - Dr Eduardo L. Martin Colloquium

Brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets have recently emerged as
new objects in observational astronomy. I will present a critical review
of what we have learned about these objects in the last 7 years.
I will highlight the problems that in my opinion are most important
for understanding the origins and evolution of substellar-mass
objects, and I will suggest how these problems may be tackled with
current and future facilities such as NGST, SIM, TPF and ALMA.
A lot of the material that I will cover will be based on research
presented at the IAU Symposium 211 held last May in Hawaii,
which was the largest meeting so far devoted to the subject of Brown Dwarfs.