Ironically, black holes create the most luminous objects in the universe. The speakers study super-massive black holes at the centers of galaxies, and are members of a team that recently imaged the “black hole shadow” in the center of the galaxy M87. They will discuss how gas falling onto black holes and jets of high-energy particles powered by the black hole’s spin cause the centers of galaxies to shine brightly across the entire spectrum from radio to visible to X-ray and gamma-ray wavelengths.
Dr. Alan Marscher is a professor of astronomy, and Dr. Svetlana Jorstad is a senior research associate in the Institute for Astrophysical Research at Boston University. Together they have published over 200 articles in scientific journals on the topic of quasars and other types of active galactic nuclei. They use data from a number of NASA satellite observatories and ground-based telescopes to follow variations in brightness and changes in images of jets of high-energy particles and magnetic fields at the centers
of some galaxies.