Skip to main content

Gallery

LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Discoveries Over Time

Video

LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Discoveries Over Time

This animation shows the increasing sample of gravitational wave sources, starting before LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA went online (with only electromagnetic, EM, sources) and then moving through the three main data releases that are now available (GTWC-1, GWTC-2.1, and GWTC-3).  Watch as the sample of merging black holes and neutron stars has dramatically increased over the past few

Visualization: LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA / Aaron Geller / Northwestern

Shane Larson’s Virtual Public Lecture, “A Storm of Stars: A Living History of the Milky Way”

Event

Shane Larson’s Virtual Public Lecture, “A Storm of Stars: A Living History of the Milky Way”

On October 28, 2020 CIERA’s Shane Larson presented this public lecture titled A Storm of Stars: A Living History of the Milky Way in a virtual Zoom webinar format to an audience of nearly 450 viewers. Larson discussed how we came to understand the Milky Way, our home galaxy, and how our ideas about the

  • Event

SN 2019ehk

Image

SN 2019ehk

Artist’s interpretation of the calcium-rich supernova 2019ehk. Shown in orange is the calcium-rich material created in the explosion. Purple coloring represents gas shedded by the star right before the explosion, which then produced bright X-ray emission when the material collided with the supernova shockwave. Learn more: Calcium-rich supernova examined with X-rays for first time

Aaron M. Geller, Northwestern University

GRB181123B

Image

GRB181123B

The afterglow of GRB181123B, captured by the Gemini North telescope. Learn more: Short gamma ray burst leaves most-distant optical afterglow ever detected

International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/K. Paterson & W. Fong (Northwestern University).

SN2019yvq in the Host Galaxy NGC 4441

Image

SN2019yvq in the Host Galaxy NGC 4441

Zwicky Transient Facility composite image of SN2019yvq (blue dot in the center of the image) in the host galaxy NGC 4441 (large yellow galaxy in the center of the image), which is nearly 140 million light-years away from Earth. SN 2019yvq exhibited a rarely observed ultraviolet flash in the days after the star exploded. Learn

ZTF/A. A. Miller (Northwestern University) and D. Goldstein (Caltech)

SN2016aps

Image

SN2016aps

A supernova at least twice as bright and energetic, and likely much more massive than any yet recorded has been identified by an international team of astronomers. Continue to the full article at University of Birmingham News. View the Nature Astronomy article, “An extremely energetic supernova from a very massive star in a dense medium”

Aaron M. Geller – Northwestern IT

CSS161010’s Host Galaxy

Image

CSS161010’s Host Galaxy

A direct image of CSS161010’s host galaxy taken with W. M. Keck Observatory’s DEIMOS instrument, shown in the bottom square and magnified in the larger top square. Observations show it is a dwarf galaxy located 500,000,000 light years away in the direction of the constellation Eridanus. Learn more: Astrophysicists Capture New Class of Transient Objects

Giacomo Terreran, CIERA/Northwestern University

Black Hole Accretion Disc

Image

Black Hole Accretion Disc

A detailed simulation of a black hole’s accretion disc created by a global team of computational astrophysicists – including CIERA’s Prof. Sasha Tchekhovskoy – solved a decades-old mystery. The accretion disc is matter that orbits and then falls into a black hole. Researchers discovered how the disc aligns with the hole’s equator, details vital to

LIGO and Beyond

Interview

LIGO and Beyond

Episode 8 of the documentary series “LIGO: The Discovery that Shook the World” features CIERA Director Vicky Kalogera discussing the science of future LIGO instruments (the detectors that observe gravitational waves). All 8 episodes can be found on YouTube.  

The Advanced LIGO Documentary Project was a collaboration among Caltech, MIT, the LIGO Laboratory and director Les Guthman that made the feature documentary, “LIGO,” and the eight-part video series, THE DISCOVERY THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, about LIGO’s major gravitational wave discoveries 2015-2017 and the birth of the new era of gravitational wave astronomy.

  • Education

CIERA’s 11th Annual Public Lecture, “Cartography of the Cosmos: Mapping the Unseen”

Event

CIERA’s 11th Annual Public Lecture, “Cartography of the Cosmos: Mapping the Unseen”

This lecture was presented by award-winning author and Yale professor Dr. Priyamvada Natarajan at Cahn Auditorium on October 24, 2019. Natarajan discussed how mapping over time encodes radical new scientific ideas. She walked through the history of the acceptance of new astronomical ideas, and talked about the status of several current transformative (and deeply contested)

  • Event,
  • Interdisciplinary