Visit of Nadia Blagorodnova

We were visited by Nadia Blagorodnova from Radboud University. We had great conversations about luminous red novae and related astrophysics.

We are interested in connecting theory, observations, and data modelling of time-domain phenomena in astronomy. This includes transients such as core-collapse supernovae and stellar mergers, persistent variable sources such as eclipsing binaries and pulsating stars, and stellar dynamics. .

We are supported by the ERC Starting grant Cat-In-hAT to develop new computational methods to study binary star mergers, common envelope, and the associated transients. We received Czech-American collaboration grant from the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports to participate in the ASAS-SN survey. The Primus award PRIMUS/SCI/17 from the Charles University provides more support.

We are organizing Science coffee every Tuesday and Thursday at 3pm in KVAS room at ITP. We discuss new papers from astro-ph or elsewhere, similarly to events at Ohio State and Princeton. We are organizing visits of several women role models in physics in Prague with the help of US Embassy in Prague Small grants programme.