Michal Zajaček

In the News

• The last day of September I had a chance to give a talk about the short-term jet precession in the VLBI data, focusing on the blazar OJ287. A short summary of the talk is provided on the website of the Vienna Center for VLBI, read HERE
(09/2021)
• A popular account of our research paper on the jet-star interaction in the Galactic Center published on NOW powered by Northrop Grumman
(08/2021)
• Video by Anton Petrov (see also the link below among public videos) featuring our Astrophysical Journal paper on the red giant-jet interactions and collisions in the Galactic Center
(01/2021)
• Science News article The Milky Way’s central black hole may have turned nearby red giant stars blue featuring our Astrophysical Journal paper on the depletion of bright red giants in the Galactic Center
(12/2020)
• Talk "Constraining the charge of the Galactic centre black hole" presented at FISICPAC 18 conference at the University of Sharjah, UAE - DOWNLOAD (11/2018)
• Study about the charge of the Galactic centre black hole published in MNRAS article was included as a research highlight in Nature Astronomy (10/2018)
• Press release of the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy (MPIfR) based on our OJ287 study (06/2018)
• MNRAS paper by Britzen et al. "OJ287: deciphering the ‘Rosetta stone of blazars’", which I co-authored, featured in NATURE News & Views article "Jet precession in binary black holes", (05/2018)
• PhD. diploma received at the Graduation Ceremony in the Main Building of the University of Cologne - Short announcement by Prof. Zensus (28/01/2018)
  
• Launch of the new issue of LABAK workshop and competition for students in Slovakia that I co-founded in 2012. Read an article HERE, STARTITUP (01/2018)
• ESO Press Release of the ApJ paper "Investigating the Relativistic Motion of the Stars Near the Supermassive Black Hole in the Galactic Center" by M. Parsa et al. that I co-authored : Press release (08/2017)
• Detection of polarized continuum emission of the Dusty S-cluster Object (DSO/G2) at the Galactic centre featured in the June issue of the British Observatory magazine: Download (06/2017)
• New review paper about the supermassive black hole Sgr A* in the Galactic center by Andreas Eckart, of which I am a co-author. Link to the review paper on Springer Paper. Part of the Astronomy News on the Russian web Gazeta: NEWS. Link to Heino Falcke's Tweet about the paper: TWEET. Tweet of T. Marshall Eubanks TWEET (03/2017)
• European Southern Observatory (ESO) commemorated 10 years of the Czech Republic in ESO LINK (03/2017)
• Lecture about the Universe for the public in the wine town of Dubova, Slovakia VIDEO (in Slovak, text in English) (26/02/2017)
• A short appearence in the Czech state television (CT) expressing the view on the terrorism in Germany and elsewhere (available in Czech/Slovak; 12/2016): LINK
• Press coverage of the Cologne-Prague-Kiel meeting 2016 (CPK16) that took place at Castle Wahn, Cologne, Germany (12/2016): LINK - English version and LINK - Czech version
• Speaker and moderator at the Science Talks event - Report (in Slovak) and Photogallery (11/2016)
• The main lecturer at the annual Days of the Universe at Makarska observatory, Croatia: The press release, Makarsko Primorje (Croatian) (08/2016)
• Short write-up of the second significant detection of gravitational waves from the 228th AAS meeting in San Diego, California: "Press conference about the second detection of gravitational waves: event GW151226", ASTRO CZ (06/2016)
• Planned talk and poster presentation in the Milky Way and Dwarf Galaxies section at the 228th American Astronomical Society meeting, San Diego, California (14/06/2016), abstracts: "Character and properties of near-infrared excess sources in the Galactic centre" and "Neutron star population in the Galactic center region as a potential source of polarized X-ray emission"
• The Bachelor Thesis of Michal Zajaček about the Late Heavy Bombardment mentioned in Astrobiology study of Katharina Bosiek et al.: "Perspectives on Comets, Comet-like Asteroids, and Their Predisposition to Provide an Environment That Is Friendly to Life", Astrobiology (04/2016)
• "Stellar shock waves close to Sgr A*", ASTRO CZ (12/2015)
• "Mystery survivor of a supermassive black hole", Nature (08/2015)
• "An astrophycisist from Max Planck Institute visits the Makarska observatory", Makarsko Primorje (Croatian) (08/2015)
• "Scharfer Infrarotblick auf das Schwarze Loch im Zentrum der Milchstraße", PhysiKonkret (Press Release of the German Physics Society) (07/2015)
• "Variable and Polarised Near-infrared Emission from the Galactic Centre", The Messenger (03/2015)
• "Best View Yet of Dusty Cloud Passing Galactic Centre Black Hole", eso1512 — Science Release (03/2015)
• "A dust-enshrouded star close to the supermassive black hole", ASTRO CZ (09/2014)
• Description of my Solar energy project presented at international competition MOSTRATEC 2010 (Brazil, Novo Hamburgo), Polvo-Special Edition (10/2010)

Public videos

• Video by Anton Petrov on the red giant-jet collisions and their disappearance in the Galactic Center:
  
  



• Presentation at the CFT PAS colloquium summarizing the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 (October 28, 2020):
  
  



• High-eccentricity clouds and stars near the supermassive black hole in the Galactic center:
  
  



• A young star survives the passage close to the supermassive black hole, inspired by Valencia-S., M., Eckart, A., Zajaček, M., et al., 2015, Zajaček et al., 2014, and Zajaček et al., 2015:
  
  

Conferences

• "Cologne-Prague meeting in Prague 2015: From supermassive black holes to star-formation in galactic nuclei", November 2015, Prague
• "Cologne-Prague-Kiel meeting 2016: Star formation, accretion, and feedback in galactic nuclei", November 30 - December 2, 2016, Castle Wahn, University of Cologne.
• "The Footpoint: Relativistic disk and jet modelling of Sgr A* and M87", May 8 - May 10 2017, Castle Wahn, University of Cologne.

Teaching activities

• I am leading general physics tutorials at the University of Cologne (Atomic physics, 2016/2017)
• I have been leading astrophysics tutorials for bachelor and master students at the University of Cologne (Astrophysics II, 2015/2016)
• advisor of bachelor and master students in Prague and Cologne:
• Sebastian Vider, BSc., Thesis: Planning Mid-Infrared Observations of the Galactic Center with the James Webb Space Telescope (2017)
• Lýdia Štofanová, BSc., Thesis: Coherent dusty and gaseous structures near the Galactic center (2016)
• occasional seminars for students, e.g. a workshop on "Supermassive Black Holes and their Host Galaxies" at the weekend seminar of the Bonn-Cologne Graduate School of Physics and Astronomy (BCGS) that took place on 17-19 April 2015 in Bad Honnef

Public outreach

• Co-founder of online student competition LABAK and author of physics and mathematics problems (2012 - now)
  
  


• Coordinator of international competition SCIENCE CUP for Slovakia in the years 2013-2017
  
  
  













• Co-author of several booklets for elementary and high school students: Booklet of Curious Scientists and LABAK Problem collection for students
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Public outreach videos

• 6th Series of the "Interviews about the Universe" (Masaryk University, Faculty of Science) with the focus on the Galactic Center (published on May 4, 2021; speech in Slovak):
  
  



• Public lecture "Stars on Cosmic Highways" (Astronomy on Tap) (Presented in the FIDDLERS PUB, Bonn, Germany, on December 18, 2018; Speech in English):
  
  



• Activities of AMAVET SLOVAKIA and from 16:40 GRAVITATIONAL WAVES - A NEW WINDOW INTO THE UNIVERSE (in Slovak):
  
  



• Public lecture about our neighborhood in the Universe (Presented in Dubová, Slovakia, on February 26, 2017; Speech in Slovak/Slides in English):