RASC Regular Meeting – Scanning the Milky Way: Identifying High Energy Sources in our Galaxy

How different are the stars we see in the night sky? How do we know their size, temperature, distance, and whether these are just ‘normal’ stars or more exotic light emitters? In this talk, I will be discussing parts of my research dedicated to identifying the most interesting stellar objects in our galaxy. First, we will overview the types of stars we expect to see in the galaxy and how we identify aspects like their temperature, distance and size as astronomers. Then we will introduce how binary star systems greatly alter the ‘expected’ behaviour of stellar properties and end with the role of these system’s in uncovering the Milky Way’s past.

Reuben Gazer is a 23 year old graduate student completing his M.Sc in Astrophysics at the University of Alberta. After completing a B.Sc in Physics at McMaster University in 2015 he came to Edmonton to study x-ray binary populations in the galaxy. His research examines x-ray emitting sources in the galaxy and compares these results to expectations of these exotic emitters from galactic models.