Our ancestors have been monitoring the night sky since 5000 years ago, making astronomy the oldest natural science. Most stars seen on the night sky have been there for millions to billions of years, except that they rise and descend along with the Earth’s rotation. But if one is very patient and lucky, one could […]
The changing sky monitored by ancient astronomers Read More »
SPOILER ALERT! We are in the year 2030 AD! So, if you do not wish to learn your future, you should stop reading now! Alright, for those of you who are still curious. Hundreds of new Supernovae have been detected. Structures in Supernova Remnants have shed light on particle acceleration, particle interactions and have also
Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) Read More »
I recently published my first paper in my Ph.D., focussing mainly on how jets accelerate from black hole accretion disks using first-principles general relativistic magneto-hydrodynamic simulations. It is an important question, how jets become relativistic, achieving high enough kinetic energy to affect the intergalactic medium upon collision. It turns out that the shape of jet
In today’s post, I would like to briefly talk about the features shown in the recent black hole image, and the efforts many people have paid for interpreting them. Someone would say that a black hole must be in the form of singularity, which makes it extremely difficult to prove its existence. However, over the
The journey of lights to a black hole Read More »
Today I thought I would discuss results from my recent paper in ApJ (ArXiv link here). This paper presented results from a very long and comprehensive radio monitoring campaign of the black hole X-ray binary MAXI J1535-571 and included many people within the group. Using observations that I personally took with the Australia Telescope Compact
Jet launching in the black hole system MAXI J1535-571 Read More »
Today I’ll be writing about the very first topic I ever did research in, during my Bachelor’s thesis: Tidal Disruption Events (or TDEs), or the most dramatic way in which a star’s life can end. Before getting into cool astrophysics stuff, let me remind you of how tides (roughly) work. Because of gravitation, the Moon
Sometimes, a star gets very unlucky… Read More »
I had the great honour last night of participating in an annual public lecture series put on by the Canadian Astronomical Society/Société Canadienne d’Astronomie (CASCA) and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. It was a pretty amazing thing to see my name on the same page as the prior speakers, many of whom have served
Helen Sawyer Hogg Prize Public Lecture in Montreal Read More »
Very soon, in August, I will have the honor to visit and use a radio dish of 30 meter diameter on Pico Vileta in the Spanish Sierra Nevada, the IRAM 30-m telescope. I will be able to use it for unraveling a long-standing mystery related to an extremely energetic object within our own Galaxy. While
Unraveling a mystery in the Spanish Sierra Nevada Read More »
Time: 22nd of September 2017, 20:54:30.43 Coordinated Universal Time. Location: cold Antarctica. A suspect has just activated the alarm. The panicked guards are running from monitor-to-monitor searching for a trace of the suspect. Trained hounds are being released smelling the air for familiar clues. Within 43 seconds the news has spread to investigators all over
Can flaring blazars be the origin of high-energy neutrinos? Read More »
An international team of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, including members from API, has announced the first results at the press conference on last Wednesday (Streaming link). The team has revealed the first ever image of the supermassive black at the heart of M87, a galaxy within the Virgo galaxy cluster, 55 million light
Black Holes’ Dining Table: thin or thick Read More »
