The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

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Priyanka Chakraborty

Center for Astrophysics

Astrophysicist

Priyanka Chakraborty

priyanka.chakraborty@cfa.harvard.edu

About

Priyanka's research bridges two powerful realms of modern astrophysics – X-ray and infrared observations – harnessing multi-wavelength synergies to probe the Universe's most extreme phenomena and their impact on cosmic evolution. Both fields are at thrilling junctures: with the XRISM X-ray observatory now operational, we are set to reveal some of the most energetic processes in our Universe with unprecedented detail (Priyanka is part of the XRISM team). Meanwhile, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is unlocking transformative insights into the early Universe to uncover the origins, evolution, and chemical compositions of early galaxies. Beside observations, she is an expert in modeling collisionally-ionized and photoionized plasma, and has been an active developer of the spectral synthesis codes - AtomDB and Cloudy for several years.

Find Priyanka's papers here.

Visit her personal website here.

Telescopes and Instruments

Chandra

The Chandra X-ray Observatory is NASA’s flagship X-ray observatory, providing essential data on everything from the environment surrounding newborn stars to the emissions from hot plasma inside galaxy clusters. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), as part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, manages Chandra’s day-to-day operations, providing spacecraft control, observation planning, and data processing for astronomers. Chandra is one of NASA’s orbiting Great Observatories, along with the Hubble.

Visit the Chandra Website

Einstein Observatory

NASA’s Einstein Observatory was the first X-ray space telescope designed to produce images of astronomical X-ray sources. The spacecraft operated from 1978 through 1981, providing important observations of pulsars, supernova remnants, supermassive black holes in other galaxies, and many more, paving the way for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The X-ray telescope was designed by researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

Lynx X-Ray Observatory

The Lynx X-ray Observatory is a proposed X-ray space telescope, designed to be the next generation following NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s upcoming Athena Telescope. This observatory will be able to take images of a larger area of the sky in X-ray light with better resolution than any existing telescope, allowing astronomers to study the first supermassive black holes, the hot gas surrounding galaxies as they evolve, and radiation from the earliest stars. Researchers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and other universities are presenting Lynx to NASA for consideration in the 2020 Decadal Survey, with a proposed launch date in the mid-2030s.

Visit the Lynx X-Ray Observatory Website

South Pole Telescope, Antarctica

The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a submillimeter observatory in Antarctica that performs measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the dark energy driving the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. The observatory is also part of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a globe-spanning multi-telescope project that captured the first image of a black hole at the center of a nearby galaxy. The SPT project is a collaboration between the University of Chicago, the University of California at Berkeley, Case Western Reserve University, the University of Illinois, and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

Visit the South Pole Telescope, Antarctica Website