VHEGA and CTAO shine at Puentes de Ciencia Outreach Event
Published 2025-02-12
Last week, Paula Kornecki and Daniel Morcuende from VHEGA, along with Alba Fernández-Barral from the CTAO, participated in the outreach event “Puentes de Ciencia”. They showcased the fascinating intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and gamma-ray astrophysics, demonstrating how cutting-edge AI techniques will revolutionize the processing of observations from the CTAO gamma-ray observatory.
Through interactive demonstrations, participants learned how AI helps distinguish gamma rays from cosmic rays—a critical task in our analyses. Attendees even had the chance to challenge the AI themselves!
From left to right: Alba Fernández-Barral (CTAO), Daniel Morcuende and Paula Kornecki (IAA-CSIC). Credit: Celia Navas (IAA).
A VHEGA thesis defense
Published 2024-10-15
On September 20th, 2024, the first thesis from the VHEGA group was successfully defended!
Juan Escudero Pedrosa presented his doctoral thesis, “Jets, Accretion, and Magnetic Fields in the Environment of Supermassive Black Holes at the Centers of Galaxies”, achieving the highest qualification and receiving the distinction cum laude.
Congratulations to the new doctor!
Jets, Accretion, and Magnetic Fields in the Environment of Supermassive Black Holes at the Center of Galaxies”, Juan Escudero Pedrosa.
AO 0235+164 is a blazar located at
redshift \(z=0.94\), that is, more than
\(\mathrm{6200 ~ Mpc}\) or \(2\times10^{10} ~ \text{light years}\) away
from Earth. It is believed that the supermassive black hole at
its center harbors more than 10 million of solar masses. An article
about it by VHEGA group member Juan Escudero Pedrosa features in this
monthly issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Blazars are amongst the brightest objects in the universe.
They are known to consist of a supermassive black hole at the center of
a galaxy with a powerful jet that accelerates particles at speeds close
to that of light towards us. These speeds make relativistic effects
absolutely crucial to understand what we are seeing. They present
periods of activity where their luminosity increases by several orders
of magnitude, making them easily visible despite their distance.
However, many questions remain about the exact mechanisms of emission
and the particles involved.
The new article studies the emission of AO 0235+164 from a
multi-wavelength perspective, gathering data from 7mm VLBI images to
high-energy \(\gamma\)-rays. The
article finds that emission is probably located at several parsecs away
from the central black hole. It also studies its interesting x-ray
behavior, proposing a model where the x-ray emission comes from a
different zone located much closer to the central black hole based on
the analysis of correlations, kinematic analysis of the jet, and
spectral energy distribution modelling.
This minute-long movie shows the activity
of AO 0235+164 during the years 2008-2015. It can be seen how in periods
of high activity, the usually compact core ejects some components. We
can also see how the magnetic field (represented by the overlaid
segments) orients itself with the direction of ejection.
