Yaël Nazé facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Yaël Nazé
Yaël Nazé at "L’Espace des sciences" on 16 October 2012
Born	1976 Baudour, Belgium
Education	Faculty of Engineering of UMons, University of Liège
Known for	Research about massive stars
Spouse(s)	Gregor Rauw
Awards	Jean Perrin Prize, Stroobant Biennial Prize, Roberval Prize, Europlanet Prize for Excellence in Public Engagement with Planetary Science
Scientific career
Fields	Astronomy, Astrophysics
Institutions	University of Liège, National Fund for Scientific Research
Thesis	(2004)

Yaël Nazé is a Belgian astrophysicist, author, and professor. She teaches at the University of Liège. She is an expert in studying massive stars. These are very large and bright stars.

She also studies how these stars interact with the space around them. Her work uses pictures and information from different space telescopes. She has even helped create new satellites for observing space.

Nazé also loves to teach people about space. She writes books and articles that connect astronomy to other cool subjects. These include archaeology (studying old things) and art like painting and music. She has won many awards for her research and for sharing science with everyone.

Early Life and Education

Yaël Nazé was born in Baudour, Belgium in 1976. When she was just 10 years old, she knew she wanted to study space. She loved looking at constellations from her home. She also read about astronomy in newspapers.

Before finishing high school, Nazé wrote to an astrophysicist named Jean-Marie Vreux. She wanted to know what to study to become an astronomer. He later became her teacher and mentor.

Nazé earned a degree in electrical engineering in 1999. She then got her PhD in Astrophysics in March 2004. This was from the University of Liège.

Exploring Massive Stars

At the University of Liège, Yaël Nazé does important research. She helps create new satellites that observe space. She also looks at information from many international observatories.

She focuses on massive stars. These stars start their lives as very hot and bright objects. They then change into other types of stars, like Wolf-Rayet stars. Her work helps us understand these stars better. She especially studies their strong stellar winds. These are streams of gas flowing out from the stars.

Her research has been shared in many news stories. For example, she studied Zeta Puppis, a massive star close to Earth. In 2013, she used data from the XMM-Newton telescope. This helped her see how the X-ray light from the star changed over time. She found that winds from massive stars are not smooth. Instead, they have many hot and cool parts.

She also worked with You-Hua Chu to find "wind-blown bubbles" in the Magellanic Clouds. These are huge clouds of gas and dust. She also studied very hot clouds of gas around extreme Wolf-Rayet stars.

How Stars Collide

Yaël Nazé uses different X-ray telescopes to study massive stars. She looks at magnetic stars, Be stars, and older massive stars. She also studies massive binary stars. These are two stars orbiting each other. In these systems, the stellar winds from the stars can crash into each other.

In 2007, she and her team found colliding winds in a star system called HD 5980. This was the first time this was clearly seen outside our galaxy. They looked at this binary star again in 2016. They were surprised to see it was much brighter than before. Its X-ray light was also stronger.

The team figured out why this happened. When stellar winds collide, they create a lot of X-rays. But if the hot gas gives off too much light, it cools down fast. This makes the collision unstable, and the X-ray light gets dimmer. By 2016, the collision had become more stable. This allowed the X-ray light to become brighter.

In 2011, Nazé led a team that studied the Cyg OB2 #9 binary star system. They used data from the XMM-Newton and Neil Gehrels Swift observatories. They looked at the X-ray light from colliding stellar winds in this system. It is located in the Cygnus star-forming region.

Teaching and Research

Since October 2019, Yaël Nazé has been a Senior Research Associate. She works at the National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS).

As a professor at the University of Liège, Nazé teaches many subjects. She teaches general physics and astronomy. She also teaches advanced topics like spectroscopy (studying light) and astrobiology (life in space).

She also teaches courses that combine different subjects. These include the history of ideas in astronomy and science communication. Nazé believes that sharing knowledge with the next generation is very important. She tries to make her classes fun and interactive.

Sharing Science with Everyone

Yaël Nazé does not just teach in universities. She also gives public talks. She hopes to inspire people and make them excited about space.

In 2012, she won an award for her work in sharing science. It was the Europlanet Prize for Excellence in Public Engagement with Planetary Science. This award recognized her efforts to reach many different groups of people. These included children, artists, and older people.

For 15 years, she has worked to highlight the contributions of women to astronomy. She also shows girls that they can have careers in astronomy.

To help more people learn about space, Yaël Nazé helped start a service for journalists. It gives daily summaries of space news in French. To get children interested, she designed a permanent exhibit on the Solar System. This exhibit is in the children's ward of the Bruyères Hospital in Belgium. She also created booklets, hands-on activities, and games for kids. These were published by the science office of the University of Liège.

Awards and Recognition

Yaël Nazé has received many awards for her work:

• Jean Perrin Prize from the French Physical Society (2017). This award is for sharing science with the public.
• Stroobant Biennial Prize from the Royal Academy of Belgium (2017). This was for her astrophysics research in 2015-2016.
• Roberval Prize (2014). This was for her book Voyager dans l'espace (Travel in Space). It recognized her outstanding book on technology.
• Europlanet Prize for Excellence in Public Engagement with Planetary Science (2012).
• Burgen Scholarship from the Academy of Europe (2010).
• Jean Rostand Prize (2009). This was for her book L'astronomie des anciens (The astronomy of the ancients).
• The Jean Teghem Prize by the CEP-ULB (2009). This was for her excellent outreach work as a researcher.
• Verdickt-Rijdams Prize and the Marie Popelin Prize/Woman of the Year (2007). These were for her book L'astronomie au féminin (The feminine side of astronomy).

See also

In Spanish: Yaël Nazé para niños