by Jeremy Thomas
One theory of the very early universe says that it may have
undergone a sudden and rapid period of inflation, when things started to happen
and life got more interesting. That sums up my first full week here too!
By Wednesday, the plan for my research project had
developed, although down a different path. I am now going to sort through a
dataset of candidate colliding galaxies for a new survey project called MANGA.
This allows astrophysicists to measure the internal structure of galaxies in
great detail, by feeding the light from small areas of a telescope field of
view, down a bundle of optical fibres to a spectrometer. The light along each
fibre comes only from a small portion of the galaxy, so features such as
rotation rate and the mass and concentration of stars can be measured. This
project has been suggested by Dr. Karen Masters, a Senior Lecturer and Research
Fellow at ICG, who has a particular interest in galaxy formation and dynamics.
In fact, she explained some of her research on the latest episode of BBC Sky at
Night which was all about cosmic impacts:
I think that Thursday was one of the
most exciting days so far, probably helped by the amazing Red Arrows aerobatic
display over the city. We had a grandstand view from the balcony on the top
floor of the Dennis Sciama building and everybody came out to watch, including
the visiting lecturer from Queen’s University Belfast, who was due to give the
afternoon seminar on Superluminous Supernovae. Incidentally, thanks to
Mr.Burkinshaw for including my photo of the Red Arrows, from the balcony, in
last week’s blog – it is also on the Spinnaker Tower Facebook page!
Despite the interruption by the Red Arrows, Superluminous
Supernovae provided a fascinating subject for an afternoon lecture. Mr.Lister,
as Head of Classics, will pleased to know that I made the link with the word
‘nova’, meaning a new star. Astronomers observed these appearing in the sky
from time to time and eventually realised that they were looking at massive
explosions as stars collapsed in on themselves. Some of these events were far
brighter than others, and were therefore named ‘supernovae’. In fact, a supernova
would be one thousand million times brighter than our Sun at the same distance
away, so supernovae are used as standard candles to allow us to measure how far
away distant galaxies are. If you know how bright an object should be up close,
but it doesn’t look that bright, then you know it is further away – just like a
street lamp in Ryde would look from Southsea seafront at night (or vice versa
for those of you who actually live in Ryde). Understanding how supernovae work
allows astronomers to predict their brightness, so that they can be used as one
of the main tools to measure very faint galaxies way back in time.
Superluminous supernovae are one hundred times brighter than normal supernovae,
and astrophysicists are still trying to find out where all this extra energy
comes from.
Some interesting ideas and discussions were going on towards
the end of the seminar, but unfortunately I had to move on to my next
appointment, which was a cream tea at the Mary Rose Museum. There was a good reason for this though, as
it was part of a networking event between local STEMNet ambassadors and
teachers, organised by the INTECH science centre at Winchester. STEMNet puts
volunteers working in fields related to Science, Technology,Engineering
and Maths in touch with schools who would like to run STEM projects. I
was there with Dr.Jen Gupta, Outreach
Officer at ICG, who gave a short presentation on the exciting outreach
resources ICG can now provide, including a mobile planetarium show for schools.
The rest of the time, since my last blog, has been spent on
more practical aspects of my sabbatical work. I have constructed a very useful
spreadsheet of the space and cosmology related topics in all the different
A-level and IB Physics specifications. This will be useful for many reasons,
but will help ICG to target outreach towards useful areas of the curriculum for
sixth formers. I have also attended meetings of the university’s Education
Liaison and Outreach Team, to discuss arrangements for the school visits to the
forthcoming National Astronomy Meeting. This will be a huge event for the staff
here, with over five hundred professional astronomers attending to discuss the
latest research, so it is real privilege for local pupils and teachers to be
invited to attend parts of the conference. There will be a few sleepless nights
next week for some people as final preparations are made, but then they are
astronomers and should be used to it!
Comments
Post a Comment
Comments with names are more likely to be published.