Time-domain astronomy group at Charles University, Prague
Congratulations to Camille Landri to defending with flying colors her PhD thesis on Theory and observations of two stars undergoing strong interaction! Dr. Landri is very soon starting postdoctoral position at the Institute of Astronomy at KU Leuven. Good luck!
Damien Gagnier is leaving us after a bit more than three years in Prague. Damien is moving to start his second postdoc at Heidelberg Institute of Theoretical Studies in the group of Prof. Roepke and will continue working on simulations of common envelope evolution. Good luck in future work!
PhD student Milan Pešta submitted a paper on Distinguishing between light curves of ellipsoidal variables with massive dark companions, contact binaries, and semidetached binaries using principal component analysis. The paper is now under review in A&A.
PhD student Camille Landri submitted a paper on The Effect of Donor Star Rejuvenation on Common Envelope Evolution written together Paul Ricker, Mathieu Renzo and others. The paper is a result of Camille’s stay at Kavli summer school last year.
The recent EAS meeting in Padova, Italy, was a good opportunity to discuss new scientific collaborations with people who would be otherwise difficult to meet at one place.
Camille Landri spent two weeks visiting Dr. Paul Ricker at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign working on hydrodynamical simulations of common envelope evolution. The trip received support from a student grant of which Camille is a PI.
PhD student from Hamburg Observatory came to visit us in Prague for two weeks to work on common envelope hydrodynamics including planets.
Our group had a major participation in a conference held at University of Barcelona: one of the five review talks and numerous discussions with the participation of Camille Landri, Jakub Cehula, Anthony Kirilov, Damien Gagnier, and Ondřej Pejcha.
Our group participated in a conference that was conveniently located in Prague. We contributed to the program by talks of Camille Landri, Jakub Cehula, and Ondřej Pejcha.
New paper by PhD student Camille Landri looks at how we can get asymmetric outflows from red supergiants such as VY CMa and other similar objects. The idea is that a companion coming in on a grazing excentric orbit will unbind a small amount of gas from the red supergiant. This gas is subject to rapid radiative cooling and forms dust, which gets pushed away from the supergiant by its radiative pressure. Radiative cooling and dust driving are necessary to form outflows that are anisotropic in the sense that the ejection happens only in a fraction of a solid angle near the pericenter. After many grazing orbits, the ejections form an asymmetric structure with imprinted spiral-like pattern. The paper (accepted to MNRAS) discusses origin, final fate, and observational implications of this scenario.
