Maria Jose Maureira is an observational astronomer, passionate about studying the early stages distar and planet formation. She completed her PhD at Yale University, where she worked with radio interferometers like ALMA in the chilean Atacama Desert and the VLA in New Mexico, USA, to identify the youngest protostars and their jets in nearby molecular clouds. Now a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, she continues her research, using powerful interferometers to zoom in and understand the formation and processes within young protostellar disks, the birthplaces of planets.
In the early stages of star formation, stars are hidden within dusty interstellar clouds, making them invisible to optical telescopes. But at radio wavelengths, these clouds become transparent, and that's where radio interferometers come in-they allow us to see and zoom in on young protostars. I'll briefly explain how radio interferometers work and share some exciting observations and discoveries from the past decade that have deepened our understanding of star and planet formation.