SAASST News

Monday, 19 December 2022 09:45

Fatima Al-Khateri, first MSc. Graduate in Astronomy and Space Sciences

The University of Sharjah has graduated its first student with a Master of Science degree in Astronomy and Space Sciences.

Ms. Fatima Al-Khateri presented her work to a jury composed of Profs. Mashhoor Al-Wardat, Ilias Fernini, Andreas Zezas (University of Crete), and a large audience attended the Sharjah Academy for Astronomy, Space Sciences, and Technology. The MSc defense was held on Monday, December 12, 2022.

Ms. Fatima's main supervisor was Dr. Antonios Manousakis. Her thesis title is "Spectral classification of several X-ray sources in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)." The sources were selected from the Chandra X-ray Observatory data. A spectroscopic campaign was conducted by Ms. Fatima using the Visible Multi-Object Spectrograph (VIMOS) instrument mounted on the 8.2m Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. Her research enabled her to identify and characterize the optical counterpart of the Be X-ray Binaries (Be-XRBs) population by analyzing representative regions of the SMC and X-ray luminosities down to ∼ 4 × 1032erg/s.

This resulted in a complete census of BeXRBs outside our Galaxy in regions with varying star-formation histories. Furthermore, this resulted in identifying the spectral type of the donor stars and the mass distribution within these systems within the SMC. As a result of the project mentioned above, it will be possible for the first time to establish and compare the donor-mass distribution in different populations within the SMC.