A Mineralogical study of silicate dust grains surrounding classical T-Tauri stars

Thesis (B.S.)--University of Rochester. Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, 2005.Observations of the silicate emission feature arising from stellar accretion disks can provide valuable information about the evolution of dust during solar system formation. Questions that I attempt to examine include the crystalline versus amorphous silicate mass ratios within the disks along with the conditions that affect change in this relationship. From observations of 45 sample objects from the Taurus-Auriga star-forming region using the Spitzer Space Telescope, I concentrated on analyzing the 8-13 micron emission feature of the spectra which relates to the processing of amorphous silicate grains into crystalline silicates. From Fourier Transforms and ratios of the 9.3 and 11.2 μm peaks, I attempt to determine the relative emissions of crystalline to amorphous silicates in the circumstellar disks and compare it to other known properties of the objects