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NASA is scheduled to launch an orbiting X-ray satellite on Wednesday, June 13, that will open a new window on the universe, allowing scientists to probe the roiling edges of black holes, exploding stars and the smallest, most frequent flares on the sun. UC Berkeley scientists and engineers helped build the instruments, will operate the satellite, and will analyze the data from supernova explosions.
Tag: black holes
Berkeley astronomers featured tonight in KQED Quest program’Black Holes’
September 26, 2012:
UC Berkeley astronomer Alex Filippenko joins William Craig and other NuSTAR satellite scientists tonight on the KQED Quest program “Black Holes: Objects of Attraction,” airing locally at 7:30 p.m. Filippenko explains the physics of black holes, while Craig and NuSTAR principal investigator Fiona Harrison of Caltech explain how the x-ray satellite will help solve black hole mysteries.
Theoretical astrophysicist receives $500,000+, no strings attached
July 24, 2012:
The Simons Foundation of New York initiated a new program of Simons Investigators this year, awarding 21 mathematicians, theoretical physicists and theoretical computer scientists $100,000 per year for 5-10 years, no strings attached. Theoretical astrophysicist Eliot Quataert was one of them.
Disaster looms for gas cloud falling into Milky Way’s central black hole
December 14, 2011:
Astronomers led by UC Berkeley’s Reinhard Genzel, also of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, have observed a cloud of gas several times the mass of Earth approaching the 4.3 million solar-mass black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Theorist Eliot Quataert calculates that the cloud will not survive the encounter, but will be heated and shredded in 2013.
Black hole eats star, producing bright gamma-ray flash
June 16, 2011:
A bright gamma-ray flare observed in March 2011 by the Swift satellite was not your typical gamma-ray burst, according to UC Berkeley astronomers and their colleagues. Its long duration and location at the center of a distant galaxy suggests that the flare was emitted as a star was ripped apart by a massive black hole.
