The Variable High Energy Sky: St. Louis Astronomical Society June Meeting

Compact objects— White Dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes —as the moniker suggests, are small.  Very small.  White dwarfs and neutron stars are only the size of the Earth or cities, respectively.  Even the most massive black holes in the Universe, with the mass of a Dwarf Galaxy, have event horizons that are no bigger than the distance to the outer planets in our solar system.  This means that with very rare exception, we cannot image these systems.  This is especially true when we study these systems in X-rays, which are difficult to focus.  But what we can do instead is perform very precise measurements of variability, on time scales as short as milliseconds or even shorter, and that lets us infer properties of these systems on size scales that we otherwise cannot resolve.  And luckily these highly energetic systems are also highly dynamic.  Much of my work revolves around studying the variability in these systems.  I will present a number of examples from my past several decades of research, discussing what these observations imply for these systems.

Michael Nowak is a Research Professor in the Department of Physics and the Associate Director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University. He researches high energy phenomena related to the physics of black holes - stellar mass black holes in our own galaxy as well as supermassive black holes in our own and other galaxies - and neutron stars.

The St. Louis Astronomical Society is an organization for individuals interested in astronomy and telescopes. The public is invited to attend its meetings, telescope observing sessions, and special events. For more information about Astronomical Society events, please visit www.slasonline.org.

Free parking will be available.