2022
Date Title Details
Jan 10 Yuhan Presents at AAS Press Conference Graduate student Yuhan Yao presents her work on source AT2020mrf via a AAS press conference! Here is a link to a recording of her presentation!
Jan 24 Myles Rotates Out of HEAG As part of his rotational grad program, Myles Sherman has rotated out of our group. We wish him the best of luck in his new position with Professor Vikram Ravi and his research group!
Jan 27 Renee's Paper is Accepted for Publication! Postdoc Renee Ludlam's new paper, Radius Constraints from Reflection Modeling of Cygnus X-2 with NuSTAR and NICER, has been accepted for publication by ApJ. Hooray!
Jan 28 NuSTAR Cycle 8 proposals due This is a guide for NuSTAR Cycle 8 Proposers!
Feb 6 Sean's Paper is Accepted for Publication! Grad student Sean Pike's new paper, MAXI and NuSTAR observations of the faint X-ray transient MAXI J1848-015 in the GLIMPSE-C01 Cluster, has been accepted for publication by ApJ! Sean says "We used NuSTAR to study the spectrum of a newly discovered X-ray source in the GLIMPSE-C01 cluster and found that despite being relatively dim, the source is a black hole accreting material at very high temperatures — around 10 million Kelvin. By looking at radiation reflected off of the accretion disk, we were able to probe the region near the black hole. We found evidence that the innermost edge of the disk moved outward as the source got dimmer. We also found that the black hole has a very high spin parameter, meaning that it drags the space around it in a circular motion."
Feb 9 Hannah's Paper is Published! Staff Scientist Hannah Earnshaw's new paper, Reconstruction of the NuSTAR point spread function using single-laser metrology, details a contingency method for calculating the NuSTAR mast aspect solution in the potential event of the loss of one of the metrology lasers. Always great to be prepared!
Feb 10 JPL Press Release about NuSTAR's Observations of Jupiter! Observations from NuSTAR have revealed the highest-energy light ever detected from Jupiter!
Mar 1 McKinley's paper gets a JPL Press Release! Postdoc McKinley Brumback's paper on monitoring long term behaviors in the accreting pulsar SMC X-1 with NuSTAR's Stray Light has been published in ApJ. This paper got both a JPL Press Release and an Astrobites write-up! Congratulations McKinley!
Mar 6 Hannah wins Best Paper in Track! Staff Scientist Hannah Earnshaw presented their work on contingencies for the NuSTAR metrology laser system at the IEEE Aerospace Conference on 6 March 2022, and won a Best Paper In Track award for the Observation Systems and Technologies Track.
Mar 15 Thomas wins a poster competition! Congratulations to Thomas Connor, who received an award for Best Astrophysics Poster at the 2021 JPL Postdoc Poster contest. At today's ceremony, he presented his work to an audience including Interim Director General Larry James and JPL Chief Scientist Mark Simons. Photos and a recording of the event are available online. Excellent work, Thomas, and congratulations!
Mar 24 Murray's paper is Accepted for Publication! Staff scientist Murray Brightman's paper on absorption lines in a hyperluminous X-ray source in NGC 4045 was accepted for publication in ApJ. You can read the accepted version on arXiv here. Congratulations Murray!
Apr 6 Labani's paper is Accepted for Publication! Postdoc Labani Mallick's new paper on high-density reflection in low mass AGN was accepted for publication in MNRAS. The paper was written up on ScienceX and was featured on the XMM Newton Home Page. Congratulations Labani!
April 15 NuSTAR 2022 Conference - Early Registration Deadline Click here for information about our upcoming NuSTAR Science Conference in Sardinia! Register by April 15 for early-bird registration rates.
May 10 McKinley gets a job! Postdoc McKinley Brumback has accepted an offer for a postdoctoral position at the University of Michigan, starting in September 2022. Congratulations McKinley!
May 15 Riley gets a job! Postdoc Riley Connors has accepted an offer for a postdoctoral position at Villanova University with Prof. Joey Neilsen. Congratulations Riley!
May 26 Brian gives von Kármán Lecture Mission Scientist Brian Grefenstette spoke as part of JPL's von Kármán lecture series about NuSTAR and its contributions to high energy astronomy. Watch the recording of the lecture here. Well done Brian!
June 13 Happy 10th Birthday NuSTAR! Ten years ago today, NuSTAR successfully launched into orbit and became the first observatory to focus high energy X-rays, opening the door to new exploration of high energy phenomena. We are so proud of NuSTAR's spectacular performance and look forward to more exciting science in the years to come. Learn more about NuSTAR by reading this JPL press release and download a beautiful poster made to commemorate the occasion.
June 14 Welcome Summer Students! Summer truly begins with the arrival of our SURF and WAVE summer students. This group of undergraduates, both from Caltech and from schools around the world, will work with postdocs and staff scientists on exciting astrophysics research projects.
June 16 Hannah's paper is accepted for publication! Staff Scientist Hannah Earnshaw's paper, titled "The variability behavior of NGC 925 ULX-3," has been accepted for publication in ApJ. You can read the full paper here. Congratulations Hannah!
June 20 Ten Years of NuSTAR Conference Our Caltech group is helping to organize the "Ten Years of NuSTAR" conference in Cagliari, Italy. We cannot wait to see you in beautiful Cagliari and hear about your recent NuSTAR science.
July 7 Renee's paper is accepted for publication! Postdoc Renee Ludlam's paper, titled " StrayCats II: An Updated Catalog of NuSTAR Stray Light Observations," has been accepted for publication in ApJ. You can read the full paper here, and learn more about the StrayCats project on their website! Congratulations Renee!
July 8 Margaret's paper is accepted for publication! Postdoc Margaret Lazzarini's paper on measuring the star formation history in the Triangulum Galaxy has been accepted for publication in ApJ. You can read the full paper here, or check out the awesome Astrobites article on the paper instead! Congratulations Margaret!
July 14 Riley's paper is accepted for publication! Postdoc Riley Connors' paper, titled "The long-stable hard state of XTE J1752-223 and the disk truncation dilemma," has been accepted for publication in ApJ. You can read the full paper here. Congratulations Riley!
July 18 Sean successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis! Graduate student Sean Pike successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis. Congratulations Dr. Pike!
July 20 Brian gives public lecture Staff scientist Brian Grefenstette gave a public lecture to the Night Sky Network about NuSTAR and the exciting X-ray science it has covered in its 10 years of operation. Read more about the talk and watch the recording here!
Aug 4 Amruta does virtual science outreach Postdoc Amruta Jaodand is passionate about promoting science with a focus on inspiring students from diverse, traditionally under-represented background. She has presented many public lectures, organised star gazing nights and for the last two years has been dedicating time to visit schools virtually or in person through Skype a Scientist Initiative. This week she 'visited' a school in Wandin, Australia to talk about various topics such as pulsars, space telescopes such as NuSTAR and growing need for coding and computational resources in astronomy analysis. There were 2 classroom of very excited students in age groups of 10-14. The virtual Q&A after talk lasted almost an hour, and ended with the students giving the 'Live Long and Prosper' sign.
Aug 18 Summer Seminar Day Summer Seminar Day marks the end of the project for most of our Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows. Our SURFs gave excellent poster and oral presentations of their final projects. Thank you for a wonderful summer of science, SURFs, and best of luck with your next year of school!
Aug 24 Gullo's paper is accepted for publication! Postdoc Gullo Mastroserio's paper on the high energy X-ray spectrum of Cyg X-1 with NuSTAR stray light and INTEGRAL has been accepted for publication in ApJ. Congratulations Gullo!
2021
Date Title Details
April 26 NuSTAR Cycle 7 targets announced Congratulations to all whose proposals were successful. Read the full target list here.
May 19 Yanjun's PhD defense Probing the Inner Accretion Flow Properties Around Black Holes with X-ray Observations
Aug 30 Sean publishes a paper! Photospheric Radius Expansion and a Double-peaked Type-I X-Ray Burst from GRS 1741.9–2853
Sept 16 Nikita's PhD defense Probing the Corona in Active Galactic Nuclei using Broadband X-ray Spectroscopy
Oct 23 Hannah goes to Hawaii! Hannah Earnshaw is off to Hawaii for few days, where they are using the Keck telescope to observe the companion stars to some ULXs in the infrared. Wish them good weather for observing!
Oct 25 Javier's project receives NASA ADAP (Astrophysics Data Analysis Program) Grant "Bridging the gap between X-ray and UV/optical disk reverberation mapping in Active Galactic Nuclei" is a project that Javier is a Co-Investigator on in tandem with MIT scientists, seeking to study supermassive black holes in AGN using new timing techniques to analyze UV and X-ray observations.
Nov 4 Decadal Survey release The National Academies' Decadal Survey (co-chaired by our own Fiona Harrison) is released and discussed in a public webinar on Thursday, November 4th. More details can be found here.
Nov 7 NuSTAR's 1000th published paper! Today (Sunday, November 7th) the NASA HEASARC (High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center) bibliography site posted the 1000th published science paper from NuSTAR. Also, the 1001st and 1002nd papers.
Nov 9 Murray's paper accepted into The Astrophysical Journal Evolution of the spin, spectrum and super-orbital period of the ultraluminous X-ray pulsar M51 ULX7
Nov 15 Labani Mallick joins the team! New Postdoc Labani Mallick joins the HEAG! Check out her profile on the People page!
Nov 23 Thomas, Daniel, and friends get a new paper accepted into The Astrophysical Journal Letters X-Ray Evidence Against the Hypothesis that the Hyper-Luminous z=6.3 Quasar J0100+2802 is Lensed
Nov 23 Nikita's Virtual lecture presentation The Enigmatic Corona: Powerhouse of Accreting Black Holes. You can watch it on YouTube Live here!
Nov 30 Javier's Paper Is Accepted to ApJ Javier Garcia's paper, Relativistic X-ray Reflection Models for Accreting Neutron Stars, is published on ApJ. Co-authors include HEAG members Renee Ludlam and Fiona Harrison, among others.
Dec 1 Fiona Testifies Before Congress Grad student Yuhan Yao submitted a new paper to ApJ presenting AT2020mrf, the fifth member of a new class of engine-driven massive star explosions!
Dec 1 Yuhan Submits to ApJ December 1st, at 11:00 am EST, Fiona provides A Review of the Decadal Survey for Astronomy and Astrophysics in the 2020s before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.
Dec 8 NuSTAR Cycle 8 Now Accepting Proposals The due date for NuSTAR Cycle 8 proposal submissions is January 28th, 2022. Proposals should be submitted via the HEASARC's ARK Remote Proposal System (RPS). For more information about this cycle, please visit the NuSTAR Proposal Page.
Dec 9 XMM-Newton Cycle 21 Results Released! The list of accepted observations for XMM-Newton AO-21 is released! The list can be found here, and features multiple HEAG members including Murray, Javier, Daniel, Yuhan, Labani, and Thomas!