VIRTUAL

 

Thursday, July 29th    2021

3:45 – 4:45 p.m.

WEBEX

  

Speaker:  Dr. Maryam Dehghanian

 

 

University of Kentucky

 

 

“Solving a mystery: a famous black hole on a holiday!”

 

 

 

Abstract: 

During this presentation, you will learn how we resolved the complex question aroused from an unexpected astrophysical phenomenon observed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST): NGC 5548 is a bright and well-studied Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) that has been the target of many monitoring campaigns since 1987. The most extensive observations were in 2013 and 2014, in which its emission and absorption lines behaved in an anomalous way that had never before been seen. I will explain how our simulations revealed the physics behind the abnormal observations and how we could see something that nobody can ever observe with a telescope: a wind very close to the black hole. 

These results did not only resolved the 2013-2014 mysteries, but also proposed a new approach to be considered in all future space-based observations.   

Bio:

Dr. Maryam Dehghanian is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Kentucky who works on a large space-based project funded by Nasa and STScI. In this project and in order to study the structure and evolution of the galaxies, they observe a galaxy for almost a year using the Hubble space telescope and several other space-based telescopes.   

 

She had started her graduate studies in 2016 at the The University of Kentucky. She had joined Prof. Gary Ferland’s group in 2017 to develop the Cloudy Code (a widely used astronomical code developed by Gary Ferland) and to perform photoionization modeling. It was during her PhD studies that she could resolve a mystery that had been remained unsolved for 5 years. As part of NASA's major "UV Initiative", The Space Telescope and Science Institute (STScI) awarded an additional 198 orbits on the Hubble Space Telescope for a new project, with the innovative title "AGN STORM2", to study a different galaxy, Mrk 817.  Dr. Dehghanian is one of the 17 scientists who proposed the project. The STScI awarded a grant to the University of Kentucky to support Dr. Dehghanian as a postdoctoral scholar to continue her work. You can find her papers at NASA ADS.