Poonam Chandra
NRAO, USA
Poonam Chandra is an Astronomer currently working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). She completed her PhD at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India under the Joint Astronomy Programme of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India. After her PhD, she worked as Jansky Postdoctoral Fellow of National Radio Astronomy Observatory at the University of Virginia from 2005 till 2008. Since 2008 onwards, she was a Senior Research Associate and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada until 2012. She has been at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR), Pune, India from 2012 until May 2022 as Reader and Associate Professor. In 2022, she joined NRAO, Charlottesville, USA as an Associate Astronomer.
Session 1C: Inaugural Lectures by Fellows/Associates
A Jayakrishnan
Exotic stars and their explosive demise: Connecting the dots
A category of stars‒more massive than 8 solar mass‒end their lives in big explosions, such as supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, fast blue optical transients etc., each having diverse sub-population, pointing to a rich but poorly understood diversity in their progenitors. A major challenge in stellar astrophysics lies in tracing back these explosions to their original stars. Intense mass loss during the brief and turbulent lives of massive stars often erases the evolutionary trail, leaving behind a puzzle. By examining how the post-explosion ejecta interacts with their surrounding medium, we can create a “TIME MACHINE” effect—decoding the life history of the progenitor long after its death. Armed with physics-based models and observations across the electromagnetic spectrum, and now with the emerging power of multi-messenger astronomy, we are beginning to piece together this cosmic narrative. The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India has played a pivotal role in this endeavor, offering unique insights into the environments shaped by these enigmatic stars.