Recent Discoveries and New Challenges in Time Domain Astronomy

Seminar
QUEST Center event
No
Speaker
Iair Arcavi, Tel Aviv University
Date
20/05/2019 - 13:30Add to Calendar 2019-05-20 13:30:00 2019-05-20 13:30:00 Recent Discoveries and New Challenges in Time Domain Astronomy Novel wide-field transient surveys of the sky are finding new types of astronomical phenomena. I will discuss three classes of events we discovered recently: (1) peculiar new types of stellar explosions, which are challenging well-established models of supernova power sources; (2) the disruptions of stars by supermassive black holes, which are providing new insights into a decades-long problem; and (3) neutron stars mergers, which have brought the first observations of an astronomical event in both gravitational and electromagnetic waves, providing new insights (but also new puzzles) from the nuclear scale to the Universe as a whole. As more surveys come online in the coming years, we must develop the ability to define and identify the interesting events and obtain the crucial data in real time. I will briefly discuss how we're addressing this challenge. N/A Department of Physics physics.dept@mail.biu.ac.il Asia/Jerusalem public
Place
N/A
Abstract

Novel wide-field transient surveys of the sky are finding new types of astronomical phenomena. I will discuss three classes of events we discovered recently: (1) peculiar new types of stellar explosions, which are challenging well-established models of supernova power sources; (2) the disruptions of stars by supermassive black holes, which are providing new insights into a decades-long problem; and (3) neutron stars mergers, which have brought the first observations of an astronomical event in both gravitational and electromagnetic waves, providing new insights (but also new puzzles) from the nuclear scale to the Universe as a whole. As more surveys come online in the coming years, we must develop the ability to define and identify the interesting events and obtain the crucial data in real time. I will briefly discuss how we're addressing this challenge.

Last Updated Date : 05/12/2022