Contact Information
Department of Physics525 Northwestern Avenue
West Lafayette, IN
47907-2036
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Telephone:
(765) 494-2970
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(765) 494-0706
Matt Lister
Purdue University
"Supermassive Black Holes, Jets, and the Gamma-Ray Sky"
Thursday September 13, 2012
4:00pm 203
Refreshments are served at 3:30 p.m. in Physics room 242
Astrophysical jets associated with supermassive black holes are among the most energetic known phenomena in nature, and are among the only objects whose evolution we can directly observe at extreme cosmological distances. At high energies, NASA's Fermi satellite has revealed that the extragalactic sky is dominated by blazars, a rare class of powerful jet aligned nearly directly at us. Fermi's continuous, all-sky coverage of the gamma-ray sky has been of remarkable benefit to the study of blazars, not only because of its rich public data stream, but also by providing a rallying point for numerous supporting multi-wavelength surveys. I will discuss recent progress made by Fermi and the MOJAVE Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) program on addressing longstanding biases that have plagued early blazar samples, and in determining the fundamental quantities that dictate the spectral energy distributions of individual blazar jets. I will also describe new observational opportunities for blazar research, including the Russian RadioAstron spacecraft and recent upgrades to the VLBA.