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A quasar is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. The emission from an AGN is powered by a supermassive black hole with a mass ranging from millions to tens of billions of solar masses, surrounded by a gaseous accretion disc. Gas in the disc falling towards the black hole heats up and releases energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. The radiant energy of quasars is enormous; the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than that of a galaxy such as the Milky Way. Quasars are usually categorized as a subclass of the more general category of AGN. The redshifts of quasars are of cosmological origin.
A gravitational lens is a distribution of matter or a point particle between a distant light source and an observer that is capable of bending the light from the source as the light travels toward the observer. This effect is known as gravitational lensing, and the amount of bending is one of the predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Treating light as corpuscles travelling at the speed of light, Newtonian physics also predicts the bending of light, but only half of that predicted by general relativity.
Vera Florence Cooper Rubin was an American astronomer, who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies by studying galactic rotation curves. By identifying the galaxy rotation problem, her work provided evidence for the existence of dark matter. These results were later confirmed over subsequent decades.
The Einstein Cross is a gravitationally lensed quasar that sits directly behind the centre of the galaxy ZW 2237+030, called Huchra's Lens. Four images of the same distant quasar appear in the middle of the foreground galaxy due to strong gravitational lensing. This system was discovered by John Huchra and coworkers in 1985, although at the time they only detected that there was a quasar behind a galaxy based on differing redshifts and did not resolve the four separate images of the quasar.
Lisa Jennifer Kewley is an Australian Astrophysicist and current Director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Previously, Kewley was Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3-D and ARC Laureate Fellow at the Australian National University College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, where she was also a Professor. Specialising in galaxy evolution, she won the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy in 2005 for her studies of oxygen in galaxies, and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy in 2008. In 2014 she was elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 2020 she received the James Craig Watson Medal. In 2021 she was elected as an international member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2022 she became the first female director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
The Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, is among the largest astrophysics groups in the UK. It includes the Jodrell Bank Observatory, the MERLIN/VLBI National Facility, and the Jodrell Bank Visitor Centre. The centre was formed after the merger of the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST which brought two astronomy groups together. The Jodrell Bank site also hosts the headquarters of the SKA Observatory (SKAO) - the International Governmental Organisation (IGO) tasked with the delivery and operation of the Square Kilometre Array, created on the signing of the Rome Convention in 2019. The SKA will be the largest telescope in the world - construction is expected to start at the end of this decade.
Geraint Francis Lewis, FLSW is a Welsh astrophysicist, who is best known for his work on dark energy, gravitational lensing and galactic cannibalism. Lewis is a Professor of Astrophysics at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, part of the University of Sydney's School of Physics. He is head of the Gravitational Astrophysics Group. He was previously the Associate Head for Research at the School of Physics, and held an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship between 2011 and 2015. Lewis won the 2016 Walter Boas Medal in recognition of excellence in research in Physics. In 2021, he was awarded the David Allen Prize of the Astronomical Society of Australia for exceptional achievement in astronomy communication.
Priyamvada (Priya) Natarajan is a professor in the departments of astronomy and physics at Yale University. She is noted for her work in mapping dark matter and dark energy, particularly with her work in gravitational lensing, and in models describing the assembly and accretion histories of supermassive black holes. She authored the book Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos.
Sarah Louise Bridle is a Professor of Food, Climate and Society at the University of York. She previously served as Professor of extragalactic astronomy and cosmology in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester where she applied statistical techniques to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and on the use of weak gravitational lensing in cosmology. From 2006 - 2015 she co-led weak lensing efforts with the Dark Energy Survey (DES), was co-lead of the Euclid weak lensing working group and was Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) UK Project Scientist from 2013 to 2017.
Alice Eve Shapley is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. She was one of the discoverers of the spiral galaxy BX442. Through her time at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) she has taught Nature of the Universe, Black Holes and Cosmic Catastrophes, Cosmology: Our Changing Concepts of the Universe, Galaxies, Scientific Writing, AGNs, Galaxies, *and* Writing, and The Formation and Evolution of Galaxies and the IGM. Shapley has committed herself too over a two decades of research and publication in the interest of physics and astronomy.
Warrick John Couch is an Australian professional astronomer. He is currently a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. He was previously the Director of Australia's largest optical observatory, the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO). He was also the president of the Australian Institute of Physics (2015–2017), and a non-executive director on the Board of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization. He was a founding non-executive director of Astronomy Australia Limited.
Georges Meylan is a Swiss astronomer, born on July 31, 1950, in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was the director of the Laboratory of Astrophysics of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, and now a professor emeritus of astrophysics and cosmology at EPFL. He is still active in both research and teaching.
Hiranya Vajramani Peiris is a British astrophysicist at University College London and Stockholm University, best known for her work on the cosmic microwave background radiation. She was one of 27 scientists who received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2018 for their "detailed maps of the early universe."
Joanna Dunkley is a British astrophysicist and Professor of Physics at Princeton University. She works on the origin of the Universe and the Cosmic microwave background (CMB) using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, the Simons Observatory and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).
Renée Hložek is a South African cosmologist, Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and an Azrieli Global Scholar within the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. She studies the cosmic microwave background, Type Ia supernova and baryon acoustic oscillations. She is a Senior TED Fellow and was made a Sloan Research Fellow in 2020. Hložek identifies as bisexual.
Dara J. Norman is an astronomer and the deputy director of the Community Science and Data Center at the National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) in Tucson, Arizona. She is also the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Diversity Advocate at NOAO. Her research centers on the influence of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) on the evolution of galaxies. In 2020, she was inducted into the inaugural cohort of American Astronomical Society Fellows in recognition of her leadership and achievements.
Ann I. Zabludoff is an American astronomer and astrophysicist whose research has included galaxy clusters and the effects of galactic environments on star formation, and the use of gravitational lenses to study the formation and interaction of the earliest galaxies, including observations with the Magellan Telescopes and Hubble Space Telescope. She is a professor of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology at the University of Arizona.
Anna Barnacka is a Polish astrophysicist and entrepreneur. She is known for her work on gravitational lensing, and astroparticle physics.
Hsiao-Wen Chen is a Taiwanese-American astronomer who uses absorption spectroscopy to study baryonic "normal matter" in the intergalactic medium and galactic halos, and the connections between this matter and the matter in star-forming regions of galaxies. She is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago.
Peter John Young was a British astrophysicist, who made major contributions in theory and observation to extragalactic astronomy and cosmology. During five years at the California Institute of Technology in 1976-1981 he carried out foundational research, including the discovery of the intergalactic medium; the detection of a supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87; detecting the optical counterpart to the first gravitational lens; developing the theory of gravitational microlensing.
References
- 1 2 3 4 Judge, Astrid; Fitzpatrick, Jane, 1964- (2012), Heroes of Australian science, Macmillan Education, retrieved 23 November 2015
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - 1 2 3 Lunn, Stephen (27 June 2009). "First Impressions: Rachel Webster". The Australian. Retrieved 23 November 2015.
- ↑ "Prof Rachel Webster". Find an expert. University of Melbourne. Awards. Retrieved 15 April 2018.
- 1 2 "Prof. Rachel Webster – Research". University of Melbourne. 2017. Retrieved 15 April 2018.
- ↑ Bhathal, Ragbir; Bhathal, Jenny (1 January 2006). Australian Backyard Astronomy. National Library Australia. ISBN 9780642276322.
- ↑ "Rachel Webster". The Conversation. 4 July 2012. Retrieved 23 November 2015.
- ↑ "Prof Rachel Webster". Find an expert. University of Melbourne. Overview. Retrieved 23 November 2015.
- ↑ "Where Do Big Ideas Come From". ABC. 17 July 2009. Retrieved 23 November 2015.
- ↑ "Rachel Lindsey Webster, Media Notes, Officer (AO) in the General Division of The Order of Australia, Australia Day 2020 Honours List" (PDF). The Office of the Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia. 26 January 2020. p. 58. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
- ↑ "Women in Physics Lecturer" . Retrieved 23 November 2015.
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