Graduate student Imran Sultan’s photo of the recently visible supernova (SN2023ixf) in the pinwheel galaxy M101. The image was taken overnight, May 20-21, 2023 about 70 miles outside of Chicago. Imran used an 80mm refractor and a DSLR on a star tracker.
Imran Sultan
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
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
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
The researchers say that by studying similar star systems, we can learn more about potentially habitable planets beyond Earth. Ultracool dwarfs are much fainter and dimmer than the sun, so any worlds with liquid water on their surfaces — a crucial ingredient to form and sustain life — would need to be much closer to
NASA/JPL Caltech image
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.
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
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
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, 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, 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)
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
The field of GRB211211A. Read the full Northwestern News story: December 7, 2022
Nature/Rastinejad et al. (2002)
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
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
A team at Northwestern University spent a decade working on a rocket. The goal was to send it to space to take an image of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, a star in the constellation that exploded. On August 21, 2022, the team launched their rocket. “People just went wild,” said Tali Figeroa-Feliciano, project lead.
On Aug. 21, 2022, a NASA-funded Northwestern University team of astrophysicists launched its “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 11,000
Northwestern University
On Aug. 21, 2022, a NASA-funded Northwestern University team of astrophysicists will launched its “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
Northwestern University
