Orsola De Marco is an Italian and Australian astrophysicist whose research concerns interacting binary stars and planetary nebulae. She is a professor in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Astrophysics and Space Technologies Research Centre at Macquarie University in Sydney. [1]
De Marco's research on old stars concerns the formation of planetary nebulae, binary stars that become large and close enough for their envelopes to interact, post common envelope binaries, and the role of binary interactions in planetary nebulae. [2]
She was the lead researcher for one of the first five images released from the James Webb Space Telescope, of the planetary nebula NGC 3132. She and her coauthors used this image to reconstruct the formation of this nebula from a nova, including the unexpected discovery of multiple companion stars that were involved in this event. [3]
As well as studying these systems observationally, her work has also included the development of supercomputer simulations of colliding stars. [4]
After attending the liceo scientifico in Bologna, De Marco attended the United World College of the Adriatic near Trieste, graduating with and International Baccalaureate Diploma. She then studied astrophysics at University College London in England, finishing with first class honours in 1994. She continued at University College London for a PhD jointly supervised by Michael J. Barlow and Peter Storey, which she completed in 1997, [5] with the dissertation Cool Wolf-Rayet central stars and their planetary nebulae. [6] [7]
After postdoctoral research at ETH Zurich in Switzerland from 1997 to 1999, University College London from 1999 to 2000, and the American Museum of Natural History in the US from 2000 to 2009, she became an associate professor at Macquarie University in 2009. She was named as an ARC Future Fellow in 2013 and since 2015 has been full professor. [5]
A planetary nebula is a type of emission nebula consisting of an expanding, glowing shell of ionized gas ejected from red giant stars late in their lives.
The Cat's Eye Nebula is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Draco, discovered by William Herschel on February 15, 1786. It was the first planetary nebula whose spectrum was investigated by the English amateur astronomer William Huggins, demonstrating that planetary nebulae were gaseous and not stellar in nature. Structurally, the object has had high-resolution images by the Hubble Space Telescope revealing knots, jets, bubbles and complex arcs, being illuminated by the central hot planetary nebula nucleus (PNN). It is a well-studied object that has been observed from radio to X-ray wavelengths. At the centre of the Cat's Eye Nebula is a dying Wolf Rayet star, the sort of which can be seen in the Webb Telescope's image of WR 124. The Cat's Eye Nebula's central star shines at magnitude +11.4. Hubble Space Telescope images show a sort of dart board pattern of concentric rings emanating outwards from the centre.
The Horsehead Nebula is a small dark nebula in the constellation Orion. The nebula is located just to the south of Alnitak, the easternmost star of Orion's Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion molecular cloud complex. It appears within the southern region of the dense dust cloud known as Lynds 1630, along the edge of the much larger, active star-forming H II region called IC 434.
The Engraved Hourglass Nebula is a young planetary nebula in the southern constellation Musca. It was discovered by Annie Jump Cannon and Margaret W. Mayall during their work on an extended Henry Draper Catalogue. At the time, it was designated simply as a small faint planetary nebula. Much improved telescopes and imaging techniques allowed the hourglass shape of the nebula to be discovered by Romano Coradi and Hugo Schwarz in images taken during 1991–1992 at the European Southern Observatory. It is conjectured that MyCn 18's hourglass shape is produced by the expansion of a fast stellar wind within a slowly expanding cloud which is denser near its equator than its poles. The vivid colours given off by the nebula are the result of different 'shells' of elements being expelled from the dying star, in this case helium, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon. The central star of the nebula is unknown.
NGC 5189 is a planetary nebula in the constellation Musca. It was discovered by James Dunlop on 1 July 1826, who catalogued it as Δ252. For many years, well into the 1960s, it was thought to be a bright emission nebula. It was Karl Gordon Henize in 1967 who first described NGC 5189 as quasi-planetary based on its spectral emissions.
NGC 7027, also known as the Jewel Bug Nebula or the Magic Carpet Nebula, is a very young and dense planetary nebula located around 3,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Discovered in 1878 by Édouard Stephan using the 800 mm (31 in) reflector at Marseille Observatory, it is one of the smallest planetary nebulae and by far the most extensively studied.
A protoplanetary nebula or preplanetary nebula is an astronomical object which is at the short-lived episode during a star's rapid evolution between the late asymptotic giant branch (LAGB)[a] phase and the subsequent planetary nebula (PN) phase. A PPN emits strongly in infrared radiation, and is a kind of reflection nebula. It is the second-from-the-last high-luminosity evolution phase in the life cycle of intermediate-mass stars.
NGC 3132 is a bright and extensively studied planetary nebula in the constellation Vela. Its distance from Earth is estimated at 613 pc or 2,000 light-years.
The Red Rectangle Nebula, so called because of its red color and unique rectangular shape, is a protoplanetary nebula in the Monoceros constellation. Also known as HD 44179, the nebula was discovered in 1973 during a rocket flight associated with the AFCRL Infrared Sky Survey called Hi Star. The binary system at the center of the nebula was first discovered by Robert Grant Aitken in 1915.
A bipolar outflow comprises two continuous flows of gas from the poles of a star. Bipolar outflows may be associated with protostars, or with evolved post-AGB stars.
NGC 7662 is a planetary nebula located in the northern constellation Andromeda. It is known as the Blue Snowball Nebula, Snowball Nebula, and Caldwell 22. This nebula was discovered October 6, 1784 by the German-born English astronomer William Herschel. In the New General Catalogue it is described as a "magnificent planetary or annular nebula, very bright, pretty small in angular size, round, blue, variable nucleus". The object has an apparent visual magnitude of 8.3 and spans an angular size of 32″ × 28″. Parallax measurements give a distance estimate of 5,730 ± 340 ly (1,757 ± 103 pc).
Grigor Gurzadyan was an Armenian astronomer, and pioneer of space astronomy.
The Orion space telescopes were a series of two instruments flown aboard Soviet spacecraft during the 1970s to conduct ultraviolet spectroscopy of stars.
NGC 2899 is a planetary nebula in the southern constellation of Vela. It was discovered by English astronomer John Herschel on February 27, 1835. This nebula can be viewed with a moderate-sized amateur telescope, but requires a larger telescope to resolve details. NGC 2899 is located at a distance of 3,350 ± 670 light-years (1,026 ± 205 pc) from the Sun and 25,894 ± 3 light-years (7,939 ± 1 pc) from the Galactic Center.
Little Ghost Nebula, also known as NGC 6369, is a planetary nebula in the constellation Ophiuchus. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1784.
Noam Soker is an Israeli theoretical astrophysicist. He was the chair of the physics department at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology from 2009 to 2015.
NGC 6778 is a planetary nebula (PN) located about 10,300 light years away from the Sun in the equatorial constellation of Aquila. It is positioned 5° to the SSW of the prominent star Delta Aquilae. This nebula was discovered by German astronomer Albert Marth during the period 1863–1865. English astronomer John Herschel may have mistakenly catalogued it as NGC 6785, as nothing can be found now at the coordinates he gave for it. In the New General Catalogue it was described as a "small, elongated, ill-defined disc".
A post-common envelope binary (PCEB) or pre-cataclysmic variable is a binary system consisting of a white dwarf or hot subdwarf and a main-sequence star or a brown dwarf. The star or brown dwarf shared a common envelope with the white dwarf progenitor in the red giant phase. In this scenario the star or brown dwarf loses angular momentum as it orbits within the envelope, eventually leaving a main-sequence star and white dwarf in a short-period orbit. A PCEB will continue to lose angular momentum via magnetic braking and gravitational waves and will eventually begin mass-transfer, resulting in a cataclysmic variable. While there are thousands of PCEBs known, there are only a few eclipsing PCEBs, also called ePCEBs. Even more rare are PCEBs with a brown dwarf as the secondary. A brown dwarf with a mass lower than 20 MJ might evaporate during the common envelope phase and therefore the secondary is supposed to have a mass higher than 20 MJ.
LoTr 5 is a large, faint planetary nebula in the constellation of Coma Berenices. In 2018, its parallax was measured by Gaia, giving a distance of about 1,650 light-years.