Zara Randriamanakoto, PhD
RESEARCH ASTRONOMER
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KANTY ASTRONOMY RESEARCH GROUP
Main research interests
Multi-wavelength studies of massive stellar clusters
Combining optical images with near-infrared and radio data to investigate the formation, evolution and disruption mechanisms of massive star clusters in Luminous Infrared Galaxies (LIRGs) and Collisional Ring Galaxies (CRGs).
Duty cycle of radio galaxies
Systematic searches of dying and restarted radio galaxies in deep radio continuum surveys to understand AGN duty cycle.
Kinematics of galaxies with enhanced star formation
Using spectroscopic observations of star-forming clumps to trace the star formation history of their host galaxy. The targets include but are not limited to LIRGs, CRGs and starburst galaxies.
Sources with peculiar radio properties
Systematic study of non-FRI/FRII radio AGN to investigate the nature of extended radio sources with unconventional morphologies (e.g. DDRGs) and physical sizes (GRGs).
Near-Infrared Adaptive Optics Imaging
New AO instruments such as GeMS/GSAOI provide sharper PSF images similar to what could be observed with space-based telescopes.
Faint radio source population
Study of faint microJy radio sources to get an overall assessment of the evolution of radio sources.
Ongoing research
Deep radio continuum wide-field observations of a population of faint radio sources.
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The discovery of faint mJy radio sources has challenged our current understanding of star formation and galaxy evolution in general. MeerKAT/MIGHTEE Large Science Project aims to address such a key science area. But until the South African precursor of the Square Kilometre Array telescope becomes fully operational, science commissioning projects using low-frequency wide-field surveys from the VLA and the GMRT are being used to acquire the necessary skills well in advance.
Probing young massive star clusters hosted by the SUNBIRD galaxies
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The SUNBIRD project is an ongoing near-infrared adaptive optics imaging survey of starburst galaxies and LIRGs. We plan to understand the formation, evolution and disruption mechanisms of the young massive star clusters hosted by the target galaxies.