Alak Ray | |
|---|---|
 Alak Ray at TIFR | |
| Born | India |
| Citizenship | Indian |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy, Physics, Astrophysics |
| Institutions | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research |
| Thesis | "Thermal conduction and cooling of young neutron stars" (1979) |
| Doctoral advisor | Malvin Ruderman |
Alak Ray is an Indian astronomer and high energy astrophysicist, who works on neutron stars, supernovae and GRBs.
Alak Ray received his B.Sc. degree from Calcutta University in 1970. He earned his Ph.D. (1979) at the Columbia University, under the supervision of Malvin Ruderman. [1]
During 1979-1981, Ray worked at University of California, Irvine as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. In 1981 he moved back to India to join the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, where he served as Reader, Associate Professor and then Professor. Between the years of 1996 and 1998, he took a sabbatical as Senior Research Associate at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
With Brian Cameron and Poonam Chandra in 2004, Ray discovered the first radio counterpart of a Soft gamma repeater, SGR 1806−20. [2] [3]
Along with Alicia Soderberg and Sayan Chakraborti in 2009, Ray discovered the first relativistic outflow from a Supernova without a detected Gamma-ray burst. [4] [5]
In collaboration with Sayan Chakraborti, Naveen Yadav, and Carolin Cardamone in 2012, Ray discovered the presence of strong magnetic fields in Green Pea Galaxies. [6]
At the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Ray supervised the doctoral research of many researchers, including Nandivada Rathnasree who was elected the Director of the Nehru Planetarium, [7] and Sayan Chakraborti who was elected Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. [8]
Ray was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 2014. [9] He was elected to the International Astronomical Union in 1985. [10]
A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. A supernova occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when a white dwarf is triggered into runaway nuclear fusion. The original object, called the progenitor, either collapses to a neutron star or black hole, or is completely destroyed to form a diffuse nebula. The peak optical luminosity of a supernova can be comparable to that of an entire galaxy before fading over several weeks or months.
SN 1604, also known as Kepler's Supernova, Kepler's Nova or Kepler's Star, was a Type Ia supernova that occurred in the Milky Way, in the constellation Ophiuchus. Appearing in 1604, it is the most recent supernova in the Milky Way galaxy to have been unquestionably observed by the naked eye, occurring no farther than 6 kiloparsecs from Earth. Before the adoption of the current naming system for supernovae, it was named for Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer who described it in De Stella Nova.
A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field (~109 to 1011 T, ~1013 to 1015 G). The magnetic-field decay powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.
A super-luminous supernova is a type of stellar explosion with a luminosity 10 or more times higher than that of standard supernovae. Like supernovae, SLSNe seem to be produced by several mechanisms, which is readily revealed by their light-curves and spectra. There are multiple models for what conditions may produce an SLSN, including core collapse in particularly massive stars, millisecond magnetars, interaction with circumstellar material, or pair-instability supernovae.
Messier 82 (also known as NGC 3034, Cigar Galaxy or M82) is a starburst galaxy approximately 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It is the second-largest member of the M81 Group, with the D25 isophotal diameter of 12.52 kiloparsecs (40,800 light-years). It is about five times more luminous than the Milky Way and its central region is about one hundred times more luminous. The starburst activity is thought to have been triggered by interaction with neighboring galaxy M81. As one of the closest starburst galaxies to Earth, M82 is the prototypical example of this galaxy type. SN 2014J, a type Ia supernova, was discovered in the galaxy on 21 January 2014. In 2014, in studying M82, scientists discovered the brightest pulsar yet known, designated M82 X-2.
A Type Ia supernova is a type of supernova that occurs in binary systems in which one of the stars is a white dwarf. The other star can be anything from a giant star to an even smaller white dwarf.
The known history of supernova observation goes back to 1006 CE. All earlier proposals for supernova observations are speculations with many alternatives.
Type Ib and Type Ic supernovae are categories of supernovae that are caused by the stellar core collapse of massive stars. These stars have shed or been stripped of their outer envelope of hydrogen, and, when compared to the spectrum of Type Ia supernovae, they lack the absorption line of silicon. Compared to Type Ib, Type Ic supernovae are hypothesized to have lost more of their initial envelope, including most of their helium. The two types are usually referred to as stripped core-collapse supernovae.
SN 2006gy was an extremely energetic supernova, also referred to as a hypernova or quark-nova, that was discovered on September 18, 2006. It was first observed by Robert Quimby and P. Mondol, and then studied by several teams of astronomers using facilities that included the Chandra, Lick, and Keck Observatories. In May 2007 NASA and several of the astronomers announced the first detailed analyses of the supernova, describing it as the "brightest stellar explosion ever recorded". In October 2007 Quimby announced that SN 2005ap had broken SN 2006gy's record as the brightest-ever recorded supernova, and several subsequent discoveries are brighter still. Time magazine listed the discovery of SN 2006gy as third in its Top 10 Scientific Discoveries for 2007.
NGC 1260 is a spiral or lenticular galaxy located 250 million light years away from earth in the constellation Perseus. It was discovered by astronomer Guillaume Bigourdan on 19 October 1884. NGC 1260 is a member of the Perseus Cluster and forms a tight pair with the galaxy PGC 12230. This galaxy is dominated by a population of many old stars.
Gamma-ray burst progenitors are the types of celestial objects that can emit gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). GRBs show an extraordinary degree of diversity. They can last anywhere from a fraction of a second to many minutes. Bursts could have a single profile or oscillate wildly up and down in intensity, and their spectra are highly variable unlike other objects in space. The near complete lack of observational constraint led to a profusion of theories, including evaporating black holes, magnetic flares on white dwarfs, accretion of matter onto neutron stars, antimatter accretion, supernovae, hypernovae, and rapid extraction of rotational energy from supermassive black holes, among others.
G1.9+0.3 is a supernova remnant (SNR) in the constellation of Sagittarius. It is the youngest-known SNR in the Milky Way, resulting from an explosion the light from which would have reached Earth some time between 1890 and 1908. The explosion was not seen from Earth as it was obscured by the dense gas and dust of the Galactic Center, where it occurred. The remnant's young age was established by combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the VLA radio observatory. It was a type Ia supernova. The remnant has a radius of over 1.3 light-years.
NGC 7424 is a barred spiral galaxy located 37.5 million light-years away in the southern constellation Grus. Its size makes it similar to our own galaxy, the Milky Way. It is called a "grand design" galaxy because of its well defined spiral arms. Two supernovae and two ultraluminous X-ray sources have been discovered in NGC 7424.
GRB 980425 was a gamma-ray burst (GRB) that was detected on 25 April 1998 at 21:49 UTC. GRB 980425 occurred at approximately the same time as SN 1998bw, providing the first evidence that gamma-ray bursts and supernovae are related, and at a distance of 40 megaparsecs (130,000,000 ly), remains the closest GRB yet observed.
A Pea galaxy, also referred to as a Pea or Green Pea, might be a type of luminous blue compact galaxy that is undergoing very high rates of star formation. Pea galaxies are so-named because of their small size and greenish appearance in the images taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).
A hypernova is a very energetic supernova which is believed to result from an extreme core-collapse scenario. In this case, a massive star collapses to form a rotating black hole emitting twin astrophysical jets and surrounded by an accretion disk. It is a type of stellar explosion that ejects material with an unusually high kinetic energy, an order of magnitude higher than most supernovae, with a luminosity at least 10 times greater. They usually appear similar to a type Ic supernova, but with unusually broad spectral lines indicating an extremely high expansion velocity. Hypernovae are one of the mechanisms for producing long gamma ray bursts (GRBs), which range from 2 seconds to over a minute in duration. They have also been referred to as superluminous supernovae, though that classification also includes other types of extremely luminous stellar explosions that have different origins.
SN 2013ej is a Type II-P supernova in the nearby spiral galaxy Messier 74. It was discovered by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search on July 25, 2013, with the 0.76 m Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, with pre-discovery images having been taken the day before.
SN 2009ip was a supernova discovered in 2009 in the spiral galaxy NGC 7259 in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus. Since the brightness waned after days post-discovery, it was redesignated as Luminous blue variable (LBV) Supernova impostor.
In astronomy, a fast blue optical transient (FBOT), or more specifically, luminous fast blue optical transient (LFBOT), is an explosive transient event similar to supernovae and gamma-ray bursts with high optical luminosity, rapid evolution, and predominantly blue emission. The origins of such explosions are currently unclear, with events occurring at not more than 0.1% of the typical core-collapse supernova rate. This class of transients initially emerged from large sky surveys at cosmological distances, yet in recent years a small number have been discovered in the local Universe, most notably AT 2018cow.
SN 2004et is a bright type IIP supernova that occurred in the spiral galaxy NGC 6946, about 22 million light years away from earth. The star that made the supernova was falsely identified to be a yellow supergiant but was then identified to be a type red supergiant of 13.8 solar masses. It was discovered alongside SN 2017eaw. SN 2004et showed some rebrightening about 1000 days after the initial supernova probably due to ejecta of circumstellar material or thermal echo. SN 2004et was one of the most luminous type IIP supernovae ever recorded and characterized.
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