Wednesday 30th April marks the date of the 51st Annual General Meeting of the Association. The purposes of the meeting are to review the activities of the past year, elect a new Council for the coming year and for the Council to receive feedback from the membership on how they – that’s you – would like to see the Association develop.
Here is the combined President’s and Secretary’s report in PowerPoint format…….
And the Membership Secretary’s Report as a Word Doc.
Synopsis:
The origin of the solar system and the emergence of life are themes central to forefront research in modern astrophysics. I will give a brief overview of the observational efforts in this direction, including our current understanding in how a star is born and the implication of this process for the resulting planetary system.
BIO
Dr Deirdre Coffey is Associate Professor at the UCD School of Physics. She earned her PhD at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS). Her post-doc experience was at Arcetri Observatory in Florence, Italy. She is National Program Manager for the European Space Agency’s upcoming space mission ‘Ariel’ to probe exoplanet atmospheres. She is the current Chair of the Astronomical Society of Ireland, and a committee member of the Royal Irish Academy’s Physical, Chemical and Mathematical Sciences Committee.
Synopsis:
The lecture will chart the career of Vera Rubin as an astronomer from school days, through university and on to professional research positions. The lecture will detail her collaboration with Kent Ford to use the newly developed image tube spectrograph which improved the optical sensitivity of telescopes ten-fold. Its subsequent use to plot the rotation curve of the Andromeda Galaxy and the unexpected results of that work will be described. Subsequent study of a range of field galaxies led to the confirmation of dark matter as part of spiral galaxy structure. The lecture will also briefly describe the instrument that was used for these discoveries and a brief indication of the properties of dark matter. Awards received by Vera Rubin in later life will also be mentioned.
Bio:
Paul Bates is currently the President of the Irish Astronomical Association, a part-time lecturer in physics and astronomy at the Belfast Metropolitan College and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. His particular interest presently is to encourage the shift of astronomy into a more central place in the curriculum of schools in Northern Ireland through his participation in AEON, the Astronomy Educators Outreach Network in the UK.
Venue: Larmor Lecture Theatre, Astrophysics Research Centre, Physics Building, QUB.
Admission free, including light refreshments, All welcome.
This latest book by well-known Irish Space Expert Brian Harvey, is an amazingly detailed, comprehensive and authoritative work. I was amazed by how much I learned even in the first Chapter!
With 448 pages, many illustrations and tables and a comprehensive index, it provides all the information you could possibly want on the subject.
Starting from the development of serious rockets during the end of WW2, through the visionary early development work of Hideo Itokawa, the father of the Japanese rocket program, up to its well-known recent successes in space missions, there is so much fascinating information here that I wanted to re-read quite a few sections even after having read it for this review.
There is far too much to list here, but the book covers everything from the history, the people, the politics, the funding, the organisations, the development of various launch sites, the successes, the failures, the international aspects of the program, to an informed look at the future.
Many will be aware of the most notable successes, such as their first successful satellite orbit in 1970 (only the 4th nation to achieve this feat), the construction of the KIBO module on the ISS, the Kaguya lander on the Moon, the Akatsuki Venus Orbiter, and of course the Hayabusa mission to collect a sample from an asteroid and return it to Earth – the first mission to achieve this remarkable feat – but there is so much more.
I admit that I used to be woefully uniformed about the remarkable Japanese space program, largely because it receives relatively little publicity in the West, but anything I want to know about it is certainly available herein. Highly recommended!
Terry Moseley
Synopsis:
The formation and migration history of the Solar System is encoded in remnant planetary disc material, known to us as the diverse populations of minor planets. Of these, comets are some of the most pristine and provide us with regular opportunities to study their properties up close as they approach the Sun on eccentric orbits.
Comets are most well known for their spectacular displays of activity in which the central, solid nucleus becomes shrouded by a coma of dust and gas. However, during periods of inactivity we can directly probe the surface properties of their nuclei.
In this talk, I will describe the insights offered by observations of short-period comet nuclei, including how we use rotational lightcurves to extract information about their physical and surface properties, and what these tell us about their evolutionary path through the Solar System.
I will also outline the upcoming Comet Interceptor mission, a fast-class collaboration between ESA and JAXA with significant contributions from UK scientists. Expected to launch in 2029, the mission aims to perform the first ever flyby of a comet making its first approach to the inner Solar System, providing us with an up-close look at some of the least thermally processed material in the Solar System.
BIO:
Dr Abbie Donaldson is a research associate at the University of Edinburgh working with Professor Colin Snodgrass as Science Support Officer for Comet Interceptor. She completed her PhD in 2024, during which she studied Jupiter-family comets using ground-based observing facilities.
Traditionally, astronomers study stars and planets by telescope. But we can also learn about them by using a microscope – through studying meteorites. From meteorites, we can learn about the processes and materials that shaped the Solar System and our planet. Tiny grains within meteorites have come from other stars, giving information about the stellar neighbourhood in which the Sun was born.
Meteorites are fragments of ancient material, natural objects that survive their fall to Earth from space. Some are metallic, but most are made of stone. They are the oldest objects that we have for study. Almost all meteorites are fragments from asteroids, and were formed at the birth of the Solar System, approximately 4570 million years ago. They show a compositional variation that spans a whole range of planetary materials, from completely unmelted and unfractionated stony chondrites to highly fractionated and differentiated iron meteorites. Meteorites, and components within them, carry records of all stages of Solar System history. There are also meteorites from the Moon and from Mars that give us insights to how these bodies have formed and evolved.
In her lecture, Monica will describe how the microscope is another tool that can be employed to trace stellar and planetary processes.
Monica Grady is Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences in the School of Physical Sciences at the Open University in Milton Keynes. She obtained a degree in Chemistry and Geology from the University of Durham in 1979, and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1983. Her thesis concerned the carbon chemistry of meteorites, and she has continued this study throughout her subsequent career. Professor Grady has led major research programmes in the study of the origin and evolution of the Solar System through analysis of meteorites, the Moon, Mars, asteroids and comets. Her particular research interests are in carbon and nitrogen chemistry with additional expertise in the mineralogy of meteorites, especially of primitive meteorites and meteorites from Mars. Her work builds a bridge between the non-biological chemistry of the Galaxy and the origin of life on Earth. It also provides a framework within which the potential for life beyond Earth can be considered.
A full biography can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Grady
This is a joint meeting with the Belfast Geologists Society
“Dawn of the Modern World: Life, Death and Rain in the late Triassic ”, by Dr Mike Simms, Irish Astronomical Association & Belfast Geologists Society.
Synopsis:
In November 1987 two young geologists stumbled upon evidence that the aridity of the Late Triassic was interrupted by greatly increased rainfall ~234 million years ago. This climate change appeared synchronous with mass extinction/diversification events both on land and in the sea. It was a key episode in the evolution of life, sometimes described as the Dawn of the Modern World, and affected everything from dinosaurs to dinoflagellates and coccoliths to coral reefs.
Evidence for the Carnian Pluvial Episode was first announced in 1989 but was virtually ignored for 20 years. Since 2010 there has been a huge upsurge in interest worldwide. Research groups have confirmed much of what was reported, and hypothesized, in that first paper and the CPE has entered the scientific ‘mainstream’.
This talk will provide a history of the discovery of the CPE, the evidence for the climatic and biotic changes, more recent developments in the study of the CPE, and its implications for what is happening with our climate today.
Both of those geologists (now not so young) live in Northern Ireland today.
Biography:
Mike has been Curator of Geology at National Museums NI since 1996, and a geologist since 1967. His interests range from fossils and ancient palaeoenvironments, to caves and what they tell us about landscape change and climate, with extraterrestrial interests in the origin and synthesis of elements and, of course, meteorites. Mike has had four fossil species named after him, including an exceptionally ugly Jurassic fish and a Jurassic cockroach.
Admission free, all are welcome, including Light Refreshments.
Synopsis:
Our Solar System is a rich and dynamical playground of rocky planets, gas and ice giants, and lots of chaotic and interesting smaller asteroids. Within the various small body populations in our Solar System, there lies is a treasure trove of information that can tell us about where we came from and how we came to exist.
In this talk I want to give a guided history tour of how we think we know how a Solar System is created, from the earliest dusty disk around the Sun, to planet formation, to what is currently out there now. I’ll then talk a bit about my own research into how we get this understanding from both ground and space-based telescopes, as well as creating models of Solar System bodies.
Finally, I’ll give everyone a sneak peek into the next revolutionary telescope, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, that is going to revolutionise our understanding of the Solar System.
Bio; I am a current 3rd (and final) year PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast, where I work with Dr Meg Schwamb on understanding the small Solar System bodies through both observational studies with ground-based telescopes, and by creating models and simulations to compare.
I completed my undergraduate master’s study at Queen’s University Belfast in 2022 in ground-based observations of comets and their brightening as they move nearer to the Sun.
Abstract: Superluminous supernovae are mysterious explosions up to 100 times brighter than typical supernovae, and therefore require a much more energetic power source. In this talk I’ll present SN2019szu, a superluminous supernova with unique properties, including a plateau in the light curve before explosion! The spectrum also reveals peculiar insights into this object such as an emission line at early times, indicating interaction with material outside the supernova. Analysis of this event suggests it is one of the best candidates for pulsational pair-instability, a mechanism that allows stars to ejects massive shells of material before exploding.
Biography:
Aysha is a final year PhD student studying superluminous supernovae, tidal disruption events, and other weird and exotic transients. She started her PhD at the University of Birmingham before moving over to Belfast last year to complete it.
Abstract: In this talk I will be covering rings around planets within our solar system, theories about how they formed and how they have survived so long. Once the background has been set then we will discuss how we might find rings around planets outside of our solar system, known as exorings, along with the candidates that have been discovered thus far, and why this area of exoplanet research is important.
Biography: Niamh is a second year PhD student at QUB studying in the Exoplanet group with Ernst de Mooij and Chris Watson. She works on the search for and characterisation of exoring systems.
Admission free, all are welcome, including Light Refreshments.
Abstract: Massive stars play a fundamental role in sculpting the chemical make up of the Universe. Yet our understanding of how these stars actually evolve is incomplete. In extremely massive stars, we predict that they should experience violent pulsations towards the end of their lives. These pulsations would be strong enough to remove entire layers from the outer regions of the star. However, we have so far not been able to observationally confirm that such phenomena take place. In this talk I will explore the physics behind these giant stellar hiccups, and how we might begin to search for them in the night sky.
Biography: Dr Charlotte Angus is a Research Fellow at the Queen’s University Belfast, working on a wide variety of exotic transient phenomena; from massive stellar explosions, to stars being shredded by black holes. She received her PhD at the University of Warwick in 2017, and has since worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southampton, then won a DARK Research Fellowship at the University of Copenhagen in 2019. Since moving to QUB at the end of last year, she has infiltrated the IAA, and accidentally been elected as its co-Vice President. She has yet to successfully solve one of Terry’s Teasers.
Admission free, all are welcome, including Light Refreshments.
