Current|Scholar|
Callan Wood
Black holes are the most extreme objects in the universe, and some of the most mysterious. Thanks to the support of the Forrest Research Foundation, I have the opportunity to work alongside world class researchers as I attempt to unravel some of these mysteries.

When matter falls onto a black hole, huge amounts of energy are liberated, which is often redirected into the form of powerful relativistic outflows which we call jets. Callan’s research is focused on investigating new imaging and modelling techniques to analyse observations made by radio telescopes of these jets launched from black holes within our galaxy. These jets can travel across the resolution of an image in a matter of minutes, making hours long observations difficult to reconstruct, since the jets become smeared out (imaging trying to take a long exposure photo of a speeding car). Not only that, but they can also increase in brightness on dramatically short timescales, sometimes increasing in brightness by a factor of 10 in a matter of minutes/hours, which also wreaks havoc on our conventional imaging algorithms. Using new imaging and modelling techniques, we hope to be able to improve our reconstructions of these observations, which when combined with X-ray observations, will help us answer the question, ‘how are these jets launched?’.

ResearchingAccreting galactic stellar-mass black holes, relativistic jets, radio astronomy
AffiliatedCurtin University|
Appointed2022
CountryAustralia
Focus areaUniverse