Cosmic Detectives: Investigating the Catastrophic Deaths of Stars

Transcript

1. Cosmic Detectives: investigating the catastrophic deaths of stars Anna Ho ah@astro.caltech.edu
2. The fate of a star depends on its mass
3. The fate of a star depends on its mass Shed outer layers Planetary Nebula White Dwarf Low mass
4. The fate of a star depends on its mass Shed outer layers Planetary Nebula White Dwarf Core-Collapse Supernova Low mass High mass
5. Core-collapse supernova NASA Ames Research Center
6. The fate of a star depends on its mass Shed outer layers Planetary Nebula White Dwarf Core-Collapse Supernova Low mass Neutron Star Black Hole Nebula High mass
7. 1% of core collapse supernovae produce engines Video credit: NASA
8. Gamma-Ray Bursts: “engine-driven” explosions 1. GRB
9. Gamma-Ray Bursts: “engine-driven” explosions 2. Afterglow 1. GRB
10. Singer et al. (2015) PTF Image, before PTF Image, after Finding bursts with the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF)
11. Open Questions •what if the jet gets choked on its way out? •what if the jet is pointed away from us? •what about jets with different compositions? •how often does a collapsing star form a jet? To answer these questions, we need to find afterglows without a gamma-ray burst!
12. Coming soon: the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)
13. P48: Discovery P60: Classification P200: Characterization Coming soon: the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)
14. PTF 7.26 deg2 Coming soon: the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)
15. ZTF Era: Discover afterglows agnostic to GRBs ALERT ZTF Image, before ZTF Image, before ZTF Image, after Step 1: Recognition Step 2: Confirmation
16. The Very Large Array (VLA), New Mexico Video credit: The National Radio Astronomy Observatory
17. GROWTH: Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen
18. Image Credit: NASA Altitude: 350 km / 250 miles (Low Earth Orbit) MAXI on the International Space Station (ISS)
19. The Very Large Array (New Mexico)
20. Mapping the sky with the VLA
21. Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger