Career
In 2006, while at the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona, Doctor Balog"s team was the first to observe the complete process of photoevaporation of a protoplanetary disk. Balog"s team was the first to observe protoplanetary disk photoevaporation and the resulting dust tail using National Aeronautics and Space Administration"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.
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.
