The most powerful cosmic engines in our universe are fueled by black holes. These cosmic engines consume large amounts of material and expel matter in the form of jets travelling at near the speed of light. Recent groundbreaking discoveries of gravitational waves from systems harbouring compact objects and the direct imaging of the black hole shadows with the Event Horizon Telescope, represent major steps forward in our understanding of such systems. However, there exists a huge population of black holes in our own Galaxy, which provides much more ideal laboratories, offering a real-time view of the behaviour of these objects and their dynamic environments. In this talk, I will discuss new experiments leveraging the capabilities of today's state-of-the-art telescopes and computational tools that allow us to directly measure fundamental properties of these Galactic black hole systems (e.g., size scales, geometry, power) and gain new insights into black hole physics.
Dr. Alex Tetarenko was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She received her BSc in Astrophysics from the University of Calgary, and she pursued graduate school at the University of Alberta, obtaining her MSc in 2014 and her PhD in 2018. For her PhD work, Alex received the J.S. Plaskett Medal awarded by the Canadian Astronomical Society for the most outstanding PhD thesis in Canada. Following her PhD studies, Alex worked in the Maunakea Observatories in Hawaii and held a NASA Einstein Fellowship at Texas Tech University. Currently, Alex is an Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Black Hole Astrophysics at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, where she is focused on studying compact objects like black holes and neutron stars in our Galaxy.