Katherine Blundell

Some of my published results are outlined below. My publications can be found here

Distant quasars and radio galaxies

Being immensely luminous, quasars and radio galaxies can be detected out to great distances and as such are important cosmological probes

• Discovery of the ``Youth-Redshift Degeneracy'' for high redshift radio galaxies this explains many trends with redshift for radio galaxies in terms of simple astrophysical properties which depend on source age, rather than invoking unnecessary cosmological effects
  Blundell & Rawlings 1999 Nature

• First demonstration that the weak radio emission associated with radio-quiet quasars arises from an active nucleus rather than star formation using VLBI techniques with phase-referencing on faint sources.
  Blundell et al (1996) ApJLett; further examples in Blundell & Beasley 1998 MNRAS

• Discovery of the very low frequency (74 MHz) spurs pointing to the X-ray cavities in Chandra images of Perseus A the era of very low frequency observing at high spatial resolution has finally dawned!
  Blundell, Kassim & Perley 2002 IAU 199; Fabian, Celotti, Blundell et al 2002 MNRAS

• First model for radio galaxy evolution to incorporate the role played by the hotspots by incorporating all the known relevant physics; Blundell et al 1999 AJ

• De-bunking of the long-standing ``spectral ageing'' of radio galaxies by incorporating all the known relevant physics; Blundell & Rawlings 2000 AJ

• Discovery of the first quasar associated with an FR-I radio structure despite assertions in the literature that they should not be there
  Blundell & Rawlings 2001 ApJLett

• Demonstration of quantitative analogies between radio-loudness of quasars and radio-loud flares in nano-quasars
  Nipoti, Blundell & Binney 2005

Nano-quasars

Nano-quasars (sometimes referred to as microquasars) - jet-producing objects in our Galaxy - may be regarded as scaled-down and speeded up analogues of the distant extragalactic quasars

• Determination of the mass of the binary components in SS433. The compact object is a black hole of 16 solar masses and the companion is more massive still.
  Blundell, Bowler & Schmidtobreick 2008, ApJLett
• Discovery of the dependence of SS433's jet velocity on its orbital period and its anti-correlation with precession cone angle An illustration of the exquisite detail in which we can observe the time-evolution of the jet ejection in nano-quasars
  Blundell & Bowler 2005, ApJLett
• First high-fidelity direct-imaging of the disc wind in a nano-quasar
  by simultaneously observing with the VLA, MERLIN and the VLBA;
  Blundell et al 2001 ApJLett

• Determination of the distance to SS433 assuming only that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the emitter
  Blundell & Bowler 2004, ApJLett
• New method to infer jet speeds, which resolves previous two orders of magnitude discrepancy with direct measurement by properly accounting for light-travel time effects;
  Miller-Jones, Blundell & Duffy 2004, ApJLett

• Demonstration of the beautifully detailed way in which changes in the oppositely directed SS433 jets are symmetric by using image processing techniques from other disciplines on the deepest yet image of this paradigmatic object; Blundell & Bowler 2004 ApJLett