In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies, described by NASA as "the most powerful class of explosions in the universe". They are the most energetic and luminous electromagnetic events since the Big Bang. Bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several hours. After an initial flash of gamma rays, a longer-lived "afterglow" is usually emitted at longer wavelengths.
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 protoplanet is a large planetary embryo that originated within a protoplanetary disk and has undergone internal melting to produce a differentiated interior. Protoplanets are thought to form out of kilometer-sized planetesimals that gravitationally perturb each other's orbits and collide, gradually coalescing into the dominant planets.
Andrea Mia Ghez is an American astrophysicist, Nobel laureate, and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Lauren B. Leichtman & Arthur E. Levine chair in Astrophysics, at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
John Norris Bahcall was an American astrophysicist and the Richard Black Professor for Astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study. He was known for a wide range of contributions to solar, galactic and extragalactic astrophysics, including the solar neutrino problem, the development of the Hubble Space Telescope and for his leadership and development of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Sagittarius A*, abbreviated Sgr A*, is the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. Viewed from Earth, it is located near the border of the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius, about 5.6° south of the ecliptic, visually close to the Butterfly Cluster (M6) and Lambda Scorpii.
NuSTAR is a NASA space-based X-ray telescope that uses a conical approximation to a Wolter telescope to focus high energy X-rays from astrophysical sources, especially for nuclear spectroscopy, and operates in the range of 3 to 79 keV.
Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni is a US-based astronomer born and raised in India. He is currently a professor of astronomy and planetary science at California Institute of Technology, and he served as director of Caltech Optical Observatory (COO) at California Institute of Technology, in which capacity he oversaw the Palomar and Keck among other telescopes. He is the recipient of a number of awards and honours.
Roger David Blandford, FRS, FRAS is a British theoretical astrophysicist, best known for his work on black holes.
M82 X-2 is an X-ray pulsar located in the galaxy Messier 82, approximately 12 million light-years from Earth. It is exceptionally luminous, radiating energy equivalent to approximately ten million Suns. This object is part of a binary system: If the pulsar is of an average size, 1.4 M☉, then its companion is at least 5.2 M☉. On average, the pulsar rotates every 1.37 seconds, and revolves around its more massive companion every 2.5 days.
SGR J1745−2900, or PSR J1745−2900, is the first-discovered magnetar orbiting the black hole Sagittarius A*, in the center of the Milky Way. The magnetar was discovered in 2013 using the Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope, the Nancay Decimetric Radio Telescope, and the Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope. The magnetar has a period of 3.76 s and a magnetic flux density of ~ 1010 T (1014 G). The magnetar is 0.33 ly from the central black hole.
Laura Ferrarese is a researcher in space science at the National Research Council of Canada. Her primary work has been performed using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.
Daryl Haggard is an American-Canadian astronomer and associate professor of physics in the Department of Physics at McGill University and the McGill Space Institute.
Misty C. Bentz is an American astrophysicist and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University. She is best known for her work on supermassive black hole mass measurements and black hole scaling relationships.
Ramesh Narayan is an Indian-American theoretical astrophysicist, currently the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University. Full member of the National Academy of Sciences, Ramesh Narayan is widely known for his contributions on the theory of black hole accretion processes. Recently he is involved in the Event Horizon Telescope project, which led in 2019 to the first image of the event horizon of a black hole.
Eric Agol is an American astronomer and astrophysicist who was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017.
Direct collapse black holes (DCBHs) are high-mass black hole seeds, putatively formed within the redshift range z=15–30, when the Universe was about 100–250 million years old. Unlike seeds formed from the first population of stars (also known as Population III stars), direct collapse black hole seeds are formed by a direct, general relativistic instability. They are very massive, with a typical mass at formation of ~105 M☉. This category of black hole seeds was originally proposed theoretically to alleviate the challenge in building supermassive black holes already at redshift z~7, as numerous observations to date have confirmed.
Jane Rebecca Rigby is an American astrophysicist who works at the Goddard Space Flight Center and is Senior Project Scientist of the James Webb Space Telescope. She was selected one of Nature's 10 Ones to Watch in 2021 and Shape 2022. In 2024 she was awarded the Presidental Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden.
Grant Tremblay is an American astrophysicist notable for research on supermassive black holes, science communication, and public advocacy for large space telescopes. He is currently an Astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and was formerly a NASA Einstein Fellow at Yale University, a Fellow at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), and an Astronomer at ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT).
