NASA Postdoctoral Program - X-Ray Astrophysics of Supernova Remnants

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific opportunity focuses on X-ray spectroscopy and imaging of supernova remnants, which provide crucial information about their underlying physics, origin, and evolution. The research program utilizes data from current and past X-ray observatories including Chandra, XMM-Newton, and NuSTAR to investigate virtually all aspects of supernova remnant dynamics and evolution. Observations are making possible deeper understanding of the conditions in the forward- and reverse-shock heated gas, the pre-explosion progenitor evolution, the explosion mechanism, ejecta abundances, and the acceleration of relativistic particles by the forward shock. The fellowship will be based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, under the advisement of Dr. Brian J Williams.