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‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ passed through massive stars

Video

‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ passed through massive stars

A Northwestern University-led team of researchers, including postdoctoral fellow Evan Anders, developed the first 3D simulations of energy rippling from a massive star’s core to its outer surface. Using these new models, the researchers determined, for the first time, how much stars should innately twinkle. Depending on how large or bright a massive star is,

Northwestern University

Mysterious dashes revealed in Milky Way’s center

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Mysterious dashes revealed in Milky Way’s center

Two populations of filaments, perpendicular and parallel to the galactic plane, which runs horizontally. Professor Farhad Yusef-Zadeh discovered the vertical filaments in the 1980s. He discovered the horizontal filaments recently and the news was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on June 2, 2023. Continue to the full CIERA news story.

Farhad Yusef-Zadeh/Northwestern University/CIERA

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Dying stars’ cocoons could be new source of gravitational waves

Video

Dying stars’ cocoons could be new source of gravitational waves

When massive stars collapse into black holes, they may create powerful outflows (or jets) of particles traveling close to the speed of light. New simulations model this process — from the time the star collapses into a black hole until the jet escapes. For the first time, the simulations show that the cocoon of stellar

Ore Gottlieb/Northwestern/CIERA

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Aaron Geller and Alex Gurvich showcase Firefly on AAS Journal Author Series

Interview

Aaron Geller and Alex Gurvich showcase Firefly on AAS Journal Author Series

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

Frank Timmes, American Astronomical Society

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CIERA Interdisciplinary Colloquium: “Extremely Cool Detectors On a Fireball: Launching the Micro-X Sounding Rocket”

Event

CIERA Interdisciplinary Colloquium: “Extremely Cool Detectors On a Fireball: Launching the Micro-X Sounding Rocket”

Professor Enectali Figueroa-Feliciano presents an Interdisciplinary Colloquium on December 1, 2022, organized by Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.   Read the full CIERA News story here.

Star Collapses into NEW Black Hole

Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do2oFQjAS8o&ab_channel=NationalScienceFoundation

Star Collapses into NEW Black Hole

Affectionately referred to as the B.O.A.T. (“brightest of all time”), the powerful explosion occurred approximately 2.4 billion light-years away from Earth, in the direction of the constellation Sagitta. Astrophysicists, including Jillian Rastinejad, first detected the GRB, which was a few hundred seconds in duration, in gamma-ray light on Oct. 9. Read the full Northwestern News

National Science Foundation

Gemini North image (Surprise kilonova upends established understanding of long gamma-ray bursts)

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Gemini North image (Surprise kilonova upends established understanding of long gamma-ray bursts)

This Gemini North image, superimposed on an image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the telltale near-infrared afterglow of a kilonova produced by a long GRB (GRB 211211A). This discovery challenges the prevailing theory that long GRBs exclusively come from supernovae, the end-of-life explosions of massive stars. Read the full Northwestern News story: December

International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Zamani; NASA/ESA

artist’s impression of a kilonova produced by two colliding neutron stars (Surprise kilonova upends established understanding of long gamma-ray bursts)

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artist’s impression of a kilonova produced by two colliding neutron stars (Surprise kilonova upends established understanding of long gamma-ray bursts)

This artist’s impression shows a kilonova produced by two colliding neutron stars. While studying the aftermath of a long gamma-ray burst (GRB), two independent teams of astronomers using a host of telescopes in space and on Earth, including the Gemini North telescope on Hawai‘i and the Gemini South telescope in Chile, have uncovered the unexpected

NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/Spaceengine

A broader view of GRB 211211A’s location (Surprise kilonova upends established understanding of long gamma-ray bursts)

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A broader view of GRB 211211A’s location (Surprise kilonova upends established understanding of long gamma-ray bursts)

A broader view of GRB 211211A’s location, circled in red, captured using three filters on Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. Read the full Northwestern News story: December 7, 2022

NASA, ESA, Rastinejad et al. (2022), Troja et al. (2022), and Gladys Kober (Catholic Univ. of America)

Gamma-ray burst 211211A (Surprise kilonova upends established understanding of long gamma-ray bursts)

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Gamma-ray burst 211211A (Surprise kilonova upends established understanding of long gamma-ray bursts)

Gamma-ray burst 211211A, the location of which is circled in red, erupted on the outskirts of a spiral galaxy around 1 billion light-years away in the constellation Boötes. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured the image with its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. Read the full Northwestern News story: December 7,

NASA, ESA, Rastinejad et al. (2022), and Gladys Kober (Catholic Univ. of America)

Illustration: two neutron stars begin to merge (Surprise kilonova upends established understanding of long gamma-ray bursts)

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Illustration: two neutron stars begin to merge (Surprise kilonova upends established understanding of long gamma-ray bursts)

Two neutron stars begin to merge in this illustration, blasting a jet of high-speed particles and producing a cloud of debris. Scientists think these kinds of events are factories for a significant portion of the universe’s heavy elements, including gold. Read the full Northwestern News story: December 7, 2022

A. Simonnet (Sonoma State University) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Artist’s impression of GRB 211211A (Surprise kilonova upends established understanding of long gamma-ray bursts)

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Artist’s impression of GRB 211211A (Surprise kilonova upends established understanding of long gamma-ray bursts)

The kilonova and gamma-ray burst is on the right. The blue color represents material squeezed along the poles, while the red colors indicate material ejected by the two inspiralling neutron stars that is now swirling around the merged object. A disk of ejecta emitted after the merger, hidden behind the red and blue ejecta, is shown in

Aaron M. Geller/Northwestern/CIERA and IT Research Computing Services

A quick jump into space — and back — for pictures of ‘star stuff’

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A quick jump into space — and back — for pictures of ‘star stuff’

On Aug. 21, a NASA-funded team that includes Northwestern faculty and students launched the “Micro-X” rocket from White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico. The rocket spent 15 minutes in space — just enough time to snap a quick image of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, a star in the Cassiopeia constellation that exploded approximately

Tali Figueroa-Feliciano

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