I am an astrophysicist and docent (assistant professor) at the University of Nova Gorica in Slovenia. My research is conducted at the Center for Astrophysics and Cosmology. I teach undergraduate courses and coordinate the outreach and promotional activities for the School of Science at the University of Nova Gorica.
I obtained my PhD in 2017 at the Physics Department at Stockholm University and the Oskar Klein Centre, with the thesis Supernovae seen through gravitational telescopes, where I was working under the supervision of Rahman Amanullah and Ariel Goobar (the observational cosmology group). I did my Bachelor and Master studies in Italy, at Bologna and Trieste University.
We are organizing an astronomical evening in Vipava on December 3rd, 2024 at 18:00. For more info, see here.
Latest highlight of the LensWatch collaboration: Webb Researchers Discover Lensed Supernova, Confirm Hubble Tension! NASA press release here.
Read here our latest papers on Supernova Encore and Supernova H0pe.
The third call for applications for SMASH postdoctoral Fellowships on Cosmology and time domain astrophysics with the Vera Rubin Observatory , co-funded by Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions, is now closed, the next one will open in early 2025. For more info, see here.
Photo Gallery and Videos from the January 2024 observing run at the New Technology Telescope, La Silla Observatory in Chile.
My research interests lie in the field of observational astrophysics and cosmology, especially time domain astronomy. My work has demonstrated the feasibility of searching for strongly lensed supernovae using ground-based facilities, leading to the discovery of five of the most distant core-collapse supernovae with implications on the volumetric core-collapse rates to very high redshifts. It has furthermore showed the utility of supernovae for cosmological studies, by investigating the properties of the strongly lensed and very distant supernova. Currently, I am also studying luminous flares from supermassive black holes in galaxies and searching for short gamma-ray bursts from supernovae induced by axion-like particles, which are potential dark matter candidates.
The list of my pubblications can be found here.
Projects financed by the Slovenian research agency (ARRS) :
Gravitational lenses such as galaxies and galaxy clusters, can magnify the flux of background galaxies. These galaxies at high redshift can host supernovae which, thanks to the magnification boost due to lensing, can be observed, otherwise too faint to be detected by current telescopes. Under the right circumstances, the background galaxies may also have multiple images due to the strong lensing. Of particular interest is to detect lensed supernovae of type Ia, because of their standard brightness. They could help improve lensing models and, if multiple images are observed, the Hubble constant can be measured independently. You can read about my work on strongly lensed supernovae here.
It is quite exciting that just in recent years, we have detected the multiple images from gravitationally lensed Type Ia supernovae ( iPTF16geu , SN Zwicky, SN H0pe and SN Encore).
Thanks to the advent of large-scale optical surveys, a diverse set of flares from the nuclear regions of galaxies has recently been discovered. These include the disruption of stars by supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies - nuclear transients known as tidal disruption events (TDEs). Active galactic nuclei (AGN) can show extreme changes in the brightness and emission line intensities, often referred to as changing-look AGN (CLAGN). Given the physical and observational similarities, the interpretation and distinction of nuclear transients as CLAGN or TDEs remains difficult. One of the obstacles of making progress in the field is the lack of well-sampled data of long-lived nuclear outbursts in AGN. In our recent work on PS16dtm, we studied a nuclear transient in a Narrow Line Seyfert 1 (NLSy1) galaxy which has been proposed to be a TDE candidate. There, we showed our multi-year spectroscopic and photometric study of PS16dtm, which can help us to better understand the outbursts originating in NLSy1 galaxies. Read here our recently published paper on PS16dtm.
In another study, led by Philip Wiseman from the University of Southampton, we reported the observations and the analysis of the most energetic non-quasar transient ever observed, AT2021lwx. It appeared in Guardian, BBC, Time, New York Times.
The nature of dark matter, the substance that accounts for more than 85% of all matter in the Universe, remains a mystery. Many theories predict that dark matter is made up from yet – undiscovered fundamental particles. A plethora of ground-based and space born experiments are looking for traces of these particles. Together with Dr. Manuel Meyer , we use explosions of stars outside of our Milky Way to search for a particular class of dark matter particles. Read here our press release or our paper published in Physical Review Letters.
I am a member of the following international collaborations:
I am the coordinator for promotional activities of the School of Science, University of Nova Gorica. Here are some of the events for the public that we have organized, more can be found here.
I am active in dissemination of astrophysics and my research, in many forms, including press releases. I have written articles for magazines, blogs and been interviewed for newspapers, TV, radio and podcasts in Slovenia and abroad.
Sem astrofizičarka in docentka na Centru za astrofiziko in kozmologijo, Univerze v Novi Gorici.
Moji raziskovalni interesi so predvsem na področju opazovalne astrofizike in kozmologije, še posebej se osredotočajo na t.i. časovno spremenljivo astronomijo, pri kateri gre za preučevanje izvorov, ki s časom hitro spreminjajo sij. Moje raziskave do sedaj so pokazale, da je možno odkrivati močno lečene supernove s teleskopi na površju Zemlje. V sklopu raziskav smo odkrili pet najbolj oddaljenih supernov, pri katerih je eksplozijo povzročil kolaps sredice zvezde, hkrati pa smo preučili prostorninsko pogostost takšnih supernov pri velikih rdečih premikih. S preučevanjem lastnosti močno lečene in zelo oddaljene supernove smo pokazali, da so lahko ti izvori zelo koristni pri kozmoloških raziskavah. Kot članica kolaboracije intermediate Palomar Transient Factory sem prispevala k odkritju novih supernov in k njihovemu preučevanju, vključno s prvo razločljivo in večkrat lečeno supernovo tipa Ia in prvo supernovo, po eksploziji katere je nastala dvojna nevtronska zvezda. Trenutno se ukvarjam še s plimskimi raztrganji zvezd in iskanjem kratkih izbruhov sevanja gama nastalih pri supernovah, ki jih povzročijo aksionom podobni delci. Aksionom podobni delci so obetavni kandidati za sestavne delce temne snovi.
Profile image credit: Blaž Samec, Delo. Cover image credit (above): NASA, ESA/Hubble, HST Frontier Fields; Cover image below: Artist's interpretation of a supernova discovery with a gravitational telescope. Courtesy of Maedeh Mohammadpour Mir.
