Astronomer UMass Amherst travels to Chile for an "astronomical pilgrimage"

Astronomer Daniel Wang of the University of Mbadachusetts at Amherst received a Fulbright Scholar Award for what he calls "an astronomical pilgrimage" to Chile, the "world capital of the world". astronomical observation on the ground "and houses more than half of the world's largest radio and optical telescopes. He plans to collaborate with his colleagues to study the mbadive black hole and its environment in the center of the Milky Way.

"I am an observational astronomer, and my collaborator at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica, Professor Jorge Cuadra, is a theoretician," Wang explains. "We want to complement each other to better understand the accretion of black holes and how the flow of our galaxy interacts with the galactic center environment, to better see how this system works." Another goal is to develop a stronger and wider collaboration with Chilean astronomy. community."

The Fulbright Prize will pay for his trip and his local support to Chile for the semester from August to December. Wang's visit will also be supported by Cuadra University after their collaboration proposal has been selected in a competition for programs that will strengthen the international academic network. As a host country, Chile provides its astronomers with about 10% of observation time on its telescopes, said Wang, offering a generous and valuable opportunity.

"They have a unique observation opportunity in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, it's the best in the world," he says. There are five astronomical institutes in Santiago alone. He adds: "I have the opportunity to visit some of these observatories and institutes, for an unusual extended visit. In general, people leave for an observation and leave, but the Fulbright offers special opportunities collaboration, mentoring and teaching. Public lectures, a departmental colloquium and public lectures, which potentially means more opportunities for my students in the future. "

Wang says, "Cuadra is an expert in numerical simulation, I am primarily an observer.We share a common interest in galactic center research.A purpose of my visit to Chile is to establish a collaborative strong and long term on education and research in high energy astrophysics and, in particular, on a comprehensive observational and theoretical study of the core of our galaxy. "

The center of the galaxy is "full of interesting objects and astronomical phenomena," including the nearest known mbadive black hole, known as Sgr A *, Wang explains. It is surrounded by a population of young mbadive stars with strong and fast winds and a cusp of old stars accumulated on the history of the galaxy, and by a ring of cold gas, all within a radius not not exceeding a few times the average distance between stars in the galaxy and all interact strongly with each other.

Wang, with a long-standing research interest in the galactic center, led the region's first large-scale investigations with the Chandra X-ray observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope and more recently with the telescope at large millimeter facilitated Mexican institutions with UMbad Amherst. The research on Sgr A * began about four years ago during his visit to the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, where he began collaboration with Cuadra.

"We were both members of an international team working on the 3 megasmecond Chandra observation of the" visionary x-ray project "on Sgr A *," he notes. "Now, some of the big questions we are going to ask are how does this black hole interact with the galactic ecosystem, if these interactions have cycles, how does the black hole affect star formation and how much does the central region affect the entire galaxy? . "

In the past five years, Wang says their work has demonstrated that joint theoretical and observational studies can actually provide insights into the functioning of various complex physical processes in the center of the galaxy. He says, "I think the results of our work will be of great interest both to the galactic center research community and to those who are trying to understand the intimate relationships of galactic nuclei with various properties at the same time. 39, galactic scale.

At UMbad Amherst, he has developed and taught courses including extragalactic astronomy, stellar astrophysics and high energy astrophysics at the graduate level, and has been the mentor of many undergraduate and postdoctoral fellows.

The Fulbright Scholar Program, sponsored by the Office of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State, was established in 1946 and focuses on scientific diplomacy and international research collaborations among researchers Americans and their colleagues around the world.

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