Zoltán Balog (astronomer)

Zoltán Balog, PhD (born 1972 in Szolnok, Hungary) is an astronomer with the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. In 2006, while at the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona, Dr. Balog's team was the first to observe the complete process of photoevaporation of a protoplanetary disk.

Observations

Balog's team was the first to observe protoplanetary disk photoevaporation and the resulting dust tail using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The resulting paper was published in Astrophysical Journal. Balog's collaborators and co-authors are astronomers James Muzerolle, Erick T. Young, George Rieke and Kate Su, all of the University of Arizona at Tucson.

Balog is a member of the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS) Guaranteed Time Oberservation (GTO) team led by Dr. George Rieke.

Photoevaporation

see main article Photo evaporation

Photoevaporation results when an extremely large star's radiation energy evaporates and literally blows away a protoplanetary disk (a mass concentration of gas and dust) in a process similar to that which forms a comet's tail. This process may explain why solar systems which have strayed too close to very large stars are often planetless.

• Spitzer Space Telescope Image Archived November 30, 2006, at the Wayback Machine. (5 Oct, 2006) retrieved 8 Jan, 2007
• Abstract of Paper: Spitzer MIPS 24 μm Detection of Photoevaporating Protoplanetary Disks (Oct, 2006) retrieved 8 Jan, 2007
• The University of Arizona Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory (5 Oct, 2006) retrieved 8 Jan, 2007

Publications

Balog earned his PhD in Physics in 2005 from the University of Szeged, Hungary. He was also an SAO pre-doctoral fellow between 1999 and 2002 at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. An updated bibliography may be found here [1]