The bachelor thesis of Kristiina Verro got a first prize on the national student research competition

Tiina Liimets | 18.12.2015

The bachelor thesis of Kristiina Verro “Physical Properties of the Nova Remnant Nova Persei 1901”, supervised by Tiina Liimets (Tartu Observatory) and Romano Corradi (Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Spain), got a first prize on the national student research competition in the natural science and technology category.

Kristiina Verro 2015

The aim of Kristiina's work was to investigate the nova remnant GK Persei using photometrical and spectroscopical data. It is important to study GK Persei because it is the longest lived and most luminous among nova remnants, which has given an opportunity to study its evolution in great detail and over long period of time. The main question in her work was to find out if the evolution of the nova remnant in optical waveband is asymmetrical as predicted by radio and x-ray data. Interestingly, the asymmetrical expansion was not found. Her measurements were a part of a larger investigation which was published in The Astrophysical Journal (Liimets et al. 2012, ApJ, 761, 34).