John Martin
University of Illinois, Springfield
 

"Eta Carinae:  Example, Problem Child, or Both?"
 

What we have learned thus far from studying Eta Car has radically re-shape our understanding of massive stars, their winds, and the mass-loss episodes that precede a supernova explosion. In Eta we have the truly unique opportunity to watch a massive star in our own galaxy evolve over human time-scales.  But Eta has been very coy with us and we are far from fully understanding it.  It is unclear from current models if  Eta is a useful prototype for understanding all massive stars.  For example, its periodic spectroscopic events might lend deep insight into the inherent instabilities in massive stars or they could just be a product of a uniquely contrived binary system.  I will be discussing these issues and how our observations with Gemini-South this January will contribute specifically to our understanding of Eta and more broadly to the astrophysics of the most massive stars in the universe.