A Texas Tech astronomer, Vallia Antoniou, has been awarded prestigious observing time on NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory to study stellar remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby star-forming galaxy approximately 160,000 light-years from Earth. This marks the second major Chandra program led by Antoniou, who is also a research associate with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. In this highly competitive process, her proposal was the only one approved from nine submissions in the Very Large Program category, focusing on X-ray binaries and their formation and evolution in different galactic environments.
Antoniou will lead a team that has selected 10 specific regions within the Large Magellanic Cloud to investigate areas likely to have high X-ray binary formation rates, contributing to a better understanding of stellar remnants like pulsars and black holes. The awarded mega-second of observing time amounts to approximately 11.5 days, a significant opportunity for groundbreaking research. Early findings from this program are expected to be available to the public later this summer and aim to deepen knowledge on the dynamics of stellar evolution within this galaxy.