Sanaea Rose

Like most galaxies, the Milky Way harbors a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at its center, surrounded by a stellar cluster. In this densely populated environment, stars frequently collide and interact with one another. I will discuss the implications of these collisions and connect them to astrophysical puzzles observed at the very heart of our galaxy. Close to the SMBH, collisions occur at very high speeds and can produce peculiar stripped stars, divested of their outer layers. However, further from the SMBH, collisions lead to mergers, and successive collisions can produce young-seeming massive stars. Leveraging a semi-analytic model and hydrodynamics simulations, I will describe how collisions shape the mass demographics and orbital properties of the stars. In particular, I will show that collisions can both eject stars from the cluster and place them on nearly radial orbits about the SMBH, such that they wander too close to the SMBH and get pulled apart by tidal forces.

Sanaea Rose is a Lindheimer Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA), Northwestern University. She studies interactions between stars and stellar remnants in dense star clusters, and in particular, how these interactions lead to unique populations of stars, binaries, and black holes and drive extreme events like collisions, mergers, and tidal disruptions. Rose enjoys leveraging simple physical models to build intuition about complex astrophysical environments. She completed her PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics in 2023 at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was advised by Smadar Naoz. Rose received her B.A. in astrophysics from Wellesley College in 2017.

In addition to research pursuits, Rose is passionate about serving and building community in both public and professional spheres. As a member of UCLA’s Physics & Astronomy Department Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, she helped establish DiversiTea, a department-wide diversity journal club. Rose was also a coordinator for UCLA’s Astronomy Live! outreach program and Astronomy on Tap West LA from 2019-2022 and an active member of the astronomy graduate program’s peer mentoring program. At CIERA, she serves on the Mentoring Action Team, which connects mentors and mentees across different career stages and organizes monthly events such as mentorship training.