The next Colloquium of the Astronomical Observatory will be held on Wednesday, March 20, at 12h in the Library.
Speaker: : Lia Aleksandrović-Sartori, ETH Zurich
Topic: Time domain astronomy near and far: unravelling the variability of nearby stars and Active Galactic Nuclei
Resume:
Variability is ubiquitous in our Universe and can be observed or inferred in different objects on all timescales, from minutes to billions of years. In this talk I will give some examples of how time domain astronomy is allowing us to find and characterise extrasolar planets, and to probe the physics of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). I will then present our state-of-the-art pipeline Quaver, tailored to extract light curves from AGN and other extended sources with unknown variability properties, based on observations from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Finally, I will present our framework for simulating AGN light curves on multiple timescales by carefully accounting for both the underlying statistics and observational biases, and show how this framework can be adapted to study stellar flares and their effect on the habitability of orbiting exoplanets.
The talk will be recorded and posted on the Observatory's Youtube channel.
