The Faculty at SESE

Sumner Starrfield is a computational astrophysicist who has studied stellar explosions (classical novae, recurrent novae, X-ray bursts, and Supernova Ia progenitors) for more than 30 years using a Lagrangian, hydrodynamic, fully implicit, stellar evolution computer code that incorporates a large nuclear reaction network. He is currently using the CHANDRA X-ray Telescope to study the evolution of RS Oph a possible supernova progenitor and working on 3-dimensional simulations of stellar explosions.