Marina Orio

I am a visiting senior scientist at the Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, and an associate member of INAF-Padova, I was a faculty member of the Turin and Padova Observatories of INAF for over 34 years until 2024.

About me:

I study binary stars, mainly containing white dwarfs, that exchange mass and undergo partial or complete explosions. With my students and with my collaborators, who reside in different institutes in all continents, we obtain data from telescopes on the ground and in space at X-rays, ultraviolet and optical wavelengths and build physical models to interpret them. Click on the Research and Presentations pages for more detailed information. I was born in Italy and lived also in Germany, the USA and Israel, always keeping a piece of all these countries inside my heart. Click on the Personal Information page to learn a little more.

Astrophysical phenomena are all interconnected! An example is in this image, taken in a filter containing only the hydrogen-alpha Balmer line. It shows the sky region surrounding nova V1974 Cyg in 1998. The nova exploded years earlier, in 1992. After the mass outflow from the central white dwarf ceased, the white dwarf kept on burning hydrogen in a shell for some time, becoming a luminous supersoft X-ray source that ionized the surrounding interstellar medium, outlining structures in it at distances of several light years (Casalegno, Orio et al. 2000 paper).

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