Near Rigel, a bright star found in the constellation Orion, lies the Witch Head Nebula (look closely to see the face!). This nebula is a reflection nebula– a cloud of dust that is lit up by nearby stars. Rigel’s starlight reflects off the dust to light up this very faint nebula. Photographer and CIERA graduate
Imran Sultan/Northwestern/CIERA
In sufficiently dark skies, you can spot a handful of stars packed closely together. This is an open star cluster called the Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters. Photographer and CIERA graduate student Imran Sultan’s image shows the Pleiades in the center and the nearby reflection nebulosity (there are evidently many more stars than
Imran Sultan/Northwestern/CIERA
A 31.5 solar-mass black hole with an 8.38 solar-mass black hole companion viewed in front of its (computer generated) stellar nursery prior to merging. The distant band of the Milky Way can be seen toward the lower-left of the black hole pair. Light is warped nearby the black holes due to their strong gravity. The
Aaron M. Geller / Northwestern CIERA & NUIT-RCS; ESO / S. Brunier
On May 27, 2023, CIERA Research Assistant Professor Aaron Geller and former NSF Graduate Fellow Alex Gurvich were featured on the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Journal Author Series to showcase Firefly, their new browser-based interactive tool for visualizing 3D particle data sets. Geller and Gurvich were interviewed by the AAS’s Frank Timmes. Read the full news story
New research suggests that a lack of a stable asteroid belt around these common, small, and cool stars may make their exoplanets less habitable for life. This edition of SETI Live features a conversation with lead researcher Anna C. Childs to explore the implications of this research and the future of the search for alien
SETI Institute
Firefly video visualization of data from the the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia satellite. The full demo enables users to explore all 1.46 billion stars in the Gaia DR3 dataset in real time. Firefly is a browser-based interactive particle visualization app created by CIERA researchers Alex Gurvich and Aaron Geller, in a joint venture with
Still image from a Firefly video visualization of data from the the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia satellite. The full demo enables users to explore all 1.46 billion stars in the Gaia DR3 dataset in real time. Firefly is a browser-based interactive particle visualization app created by CIERA researchers Alex Gurvich and Aaron Geller, in
Left: NASA Spitzer image showing the portion of the Rho Oph dark cloud observed with HAWC+ instrument….
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA. SOFIA/ HAWC+/ Northwestern University /F. Pereira Santos
Cliff Johnson (Northwestern University) and colleagues took this image using the Dark Energy Camera on the 4-meter Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Nineteen Starlink satellite trails crossed the image during the six-minute exposure. The image was taken as part of the DELVE survey, which is mapping the outskirts of the Magellanic Clouds,
DELVE Survey / CTIO / AURA / NSF
An international team of astronomers, including Northwestern University’s Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, has discovered one of the largest structures ever observed in the Milky Way. A newly spotted pair of radio-emitting bubbles reach hundreds of light-years tall, dwarfing all other structures in the central region of the galaxy.
APERTURE: A Precise Extremely large Reflective Telescope Using Reconfigurable Elements. This is the deployment concept which was produced during the NIAC Phase I feasibility study. APERTURE is a UV-Visible telescope with a 16-m diameter primary mirror. The primary is a flexible membrane coated with magnetic smart material. The shape of the reflector can be corrected
Mel Ulmer / CIERA Northwestern
Northwestern Physics and Astronomy student Shi Ye presents a talk as part of the Northwestern Ready Set Go (RSG) program. The goals of the program are to increase awareness for the urgent need for excellent research communicators and to coach graduate and post doctoral researchers to improve their own presentation skills. The program focuses on three important
Northwestern's RSG Program
Binary+single encounter that leads to an exchange, followed by a second binary+single encounter that leads to a collision Within star clusters, close encounters between single and multiple stars can be frequent and may lead to the production of exotic stars like X-ray sources and blue stragglers. By using the small-N-body code FEWBODY and another visualization
Movies by Aaron Geller using IDL and MPEG Streamclip; dynamical calculation performed using FEWBODY / Funding: NSF
Triple+binary encounter that leads to a collision Within star clusters, close encounters between single and multiple stars can be frequent and may lead to the production of exotic stars like X-ray sources and blue stragglers. By using the small-N-body code FEWBODY and another visualization software, a few visualizations of interesting stellar encounters were created. In
Movies by Aaron Geller using IDL and MPEG Streamclip; dynamical calculation performed using FEWBODY / Funding: NSF
Binary + single encounter that leads to a collision Within star clusters, close encounters between single and multiple stars can be frequent and may lead to the production of exotic stars like X-ray sources and blue stragglers. By using the small-N-body code FEWBODY and another visualization software, a few visualizations of interesting stellar encounters were
Movies by Aaron Geller using IDL and MPEG Streamclip; dynamical calculation performed using FEWBODY / Funding: NSF
Binary+single encounter that leads to an exchange Within star clusters, close encounters between single and multiple stars can be frequent and may lead to the production of exotic stars like X-ray sources and blue stragglers. By using the small-N-body code FEWBODY and another visualization software, a few visualizations of interesting stellar encounters were created. In
Movies by Aaron Geller using IDL and MPEG Streamclip; dynamical calculation performed using FEWBODY / Funding: NSF
This movie, Life of the Pleiades, was generated from an interactive visualization that Aaron Geller developed with Mark SubbaRao using Uniview. The interactive version can be shown on a planetarium dome, or rendered into a movie (as shown here). A 3D version of this movie exists in the Space Visualization Lab at the Adler Planetarium.
Created by A. M. Geller and M. SubbaRao, using Uniview; music, narration and audio by A. M. Geller; dynamical calculation with stellar evolution performed using the NBODY6 code.
This movie shows one of the possible evolutionary scenarios of a binary system. Binary systems are star systems comprising two stars orbiting around their common center of mass in a Keplerian orbit, which means that the two components are bound together by their mutual gravitational attraction. In this movie, the binary system consists of a
Stellar simulation by Vicky Kalogera, Bart Willems and Francesca Valsecchi. Visualization by Matthew McCrory. / Funding: NSF and LIGO
