The goal of this project is to detect cold fronts and radio minihalos in clusters of galaxies using x-ray and radio observations. Analyzing other features in the x-ray and radio images (shocks, relics) are also part of the project. We have used the observations of Chandra X-ray Observatory and MeerKAT radio telescope so far.
In 2012, Asad completed an MSc thesis about the origin of cold fronts and radio minihalos, and their possible connections, in relaxed and massive clusters of galaxies. The thesis investigated five clusters in order to investigate whether their radio-emitting minihalos are surrounded by cold fronts or not.
In two papers in 2017 and 2019, Giacintucci et al. published a complete list of radio minihalos known until that time. Asad et al. (2019) submitted a proposal to observe 5 clusters of galaxies using the newly built MeerKAT and the proposal was accepted. The resulting radio images were analyzed and published by Trehaeven et al. (2023). But they have not been compared with x-ray images yet.
The first astronomy research assistant at IUB, Zareef Jafar, created a pipeline (available on github) for downloading and processing x-ray images of galaxy clusters available in the Chandra archive, after finishing his BSc thesis on the same topic from BRAC University.
People
- Khan Asad, PhD, supervisor.
- Mozammel Hossain Masum, BSc student, IUB.
- Md Fardin Islam, BSc student, IUB.
- Amit Bikram Roy, BSc student, IUB.
- Abir Ehsan Evan, BSc student, IUB.
Alumni
- Zareef Jafar, BSc from BRAC University.
