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Black Hole Accretion Disk

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Black Hole Accretion Disk

The massive black hole in M33 X-7 is hidden in the X-ray bright center of the pancake-like accretion disk of matter. The black-hole’s hot (blue) and massive star companion is losing mass in a wind that gets pulled and captured by the black hole. Learn more. 

NU Viz and CIERA: Matthew McCrory, Francesca Valsecchi, and Vicky Kalogera

Great Conjunction 2020

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Great Conjunction 2020

PhD student Newlin Weatherford, who holds the Riedel Family Graduate Fellowship at CIERA, captured the Great Conjunction (“Christmas Star”) of Jupiter and Saturn on December 21, 2020 at 6:20 pm PT from Novato, California. Using his Panasonic DZ1000, Newlin wasn’t able to resolve Saturn’s rings, but we can see Callisto and Io and many faint

Newlin Weatherford, Northwestern CIERA

Models and Simulations Run on the Cluster and in the Family

Interview

Models and Simulations Run on the Cluster and in the Family

From Purdue University’s Long Tales of Science podcast, hear CIERA’s Dr. Sarah Wellons, an astrophysicist who uses high performance computing resources to run massive simulations of galaxy formation, and her mother, Dr. Helen Wellons, a retired chemical engineer who used parallel computing to deploy computational modeling applications to optimize real-time refinery operations at ExxonMobil.

  • Science

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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