Geneviève de Messières' Home Page

Geneviève Escande de Messières
Graduate Student

Email: ged3j at virginia dot edu
Phone: (434) 924-4347
Fax: (434) 924-3104
Office: Astronomy Building 220
Address:
    Department of Astronomy
    PO Box 400325
    Charlottesville, VA 22904-4325

Research interests

I am a fifth-year graduate student at the University of Virginia.

Spitzer Spectral Maps of Cooling Flows in Galaxy Clusters

I study cooling flows in eight galaxy clusters with Bob O'Connell, using the Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Spectrograph.

Gas is flowing into the gravitational well of the galaxy clusters, heating up, and radiating light. This should cool it down in the absence of a heat source. However, astronomers using the powerful X-ray telescopes Chandra and XMM-Newton do not detect much cooled gas.

Some kind of engine is keeping the gas hot -- perhaps an active galactic nucleus. To the right is one example of one of our cooling flows in X-rays; another is the galaxy cluster Hydra A:

Abell 1835 with Chandra: McNamara et al 2006, ApJ 648, 164

The X-ray image above is the center of one of our cooling flows, galaxy cluster Abell 1835. Notice the two darker holes toward the top and lower left. Symmetrically flanking the active radio source at the nucleus, they appear to be cavities in the hot gas. They were blown out by jets from the central supermassive black hole.

A Spitzer Spectral Cube of the Tarantula Nebula

I am also working on Spitzer data of the Tarantula Nebula, a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, with Rémy Indebetouw. Composite wide-angle image of the Tarantula Nebula from ESO.	One of my initial spectral maps of the Tarantula Nebula, contrasting the different phases of the interstellar medium. Sulfur and hydrogen (in blue and red) emit light around the star-forming rim of the nebula, while dust (in green) emits in the quieter environment further out.
The same spectral map as above, now shown as a blow-up from a much wider map of the entire Large Magellanic Cloud. The image at right is a three-color mosaic of images from the Spitzer cameras IRAC (blue and green) and MIPS (red). It was provided by the SAGE team.

Anomalies in the Perseus Galaxy Cluster: A Multiwavelength Survey

I am interested in studying the Perseus galaxy cluster. One of the nearest galaxy clusters, Perseus harbors a very unusual galaxy at its core, NGC 1275.

What I'm up to


Classes are over! In October 2006, I visited the 90-inch Bok telescope in Arizona to observe the Perseus galaxy cluster. I went back in late March 2007.
	In January 2008, I presented a poster at the AAS meeting in Austin, TX.
My curriculum vitae doesn't exist yet.

Photos

My photos	Family photos	Megan's photos.
Joleen's photos	Jessica's photos	Kris's photos
Jake's photos	Gail's photos	Nicole's photos
Rood's Photo Album	Greg's photos	Peter's photos

My family and friends


My sister Margot de Messières' eponymous website	My brother-in-law Tsetso Naydenov's website


My brother Stéphane de Messières and his team are just launching their website, Citizens Market	My uncle Wynn Betts' Southwest gifts shop, Santa Fe Market