Short article
The University of Maryland astronomers contribute to a wealth of discoveries described in seven new publications. Seven new papers about early results and technical specifications for ZTF were recently accepted for publication in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
This is a composite image of Andromeda galaxy was made by comprising three visible bands of light captured by the Zwicky Transient Facility, it covers 2.9 square degrees of sky, (only a 16th of of it's full view).
“With the ZTF Northern Sky Survey, we are conducting a systematic study of transients in the nuclei of galaxies, allowing us to catch stars in the act of being ripped apart by supermassive black holes and capture active galactic nuclei ‘turning on’ from a previously quiescent state,” said Suvi Gezari, an assistant professor of astronomy at UMD and a fellow of the Joint Space-Science Institute whose research focuses on time-domain astronomy. “We expect to yield enough of these events in the three-year survey to transform our understanding of accretion onto supermassive black holes lurking in the centers of galaxies.”Discoveries thus far from ZTF have included two black holes shedding stars, as stars wander too close to black holes there can be a tidal disruption by the gravity of a black hole and this causes them to be stretched into oblivion. The data team at the facility got so fed up with using the technical name for the objects that they nicknamed them Ned Stark and Jon Snow after the Game of Thrones characters. Also discovered by ZTF have been new supernovae, binary stars and asteroids.
Link to all published papers; https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/1538-3873/page/Zwicky-Transient-Facility
Article source from; cmns.umd.edu/news-events