‘Gamma-ray bursts and the gravitational wave connection’

LORRAINE HANLON is Full Professor of Astronomy at University College Dublin (UCD) and is Director of C-Space, UCD’s Centre for Space Research.

She did her undergraduate (BSc) and graduate (MSc and PhD) degrees in Experimental Physics and was a research fellow and an EU Human Capital and Mobility fellow at the European Space and Technology Research Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, ESA’s establishment for space mission development. 

 She joined the academic staff of UCD in 1996, serving as Head of the School of Physics between 2008 and 2011. She is currently Chair of ESA’s Astronomy Working Group and of the INTEGRAL Users’ Group, is a member of the THESEUS Science Study Team, the Space Science Advisory Committee and a member of Council of the Royal Astronomical Society. 

Lorraine is programme director of UCD’s MSc in Space Science and Technology. Her main research interests are gamma-ray bursts, multi-messenger astronomy, robotic telescopes, and space instrumentation. She is the Endorsing Professor for EIRSAT-1, Ireland’s first satellite, a CubeSat being developed by an interdisciplinary team of UCD students and staff under ESA’s ‘Fly Your Satellite!’ programme.  

Paul Evans is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Prof Lorraine Hanlon
Time: Jan 20, 2021 07:15 PM London

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The room will open around 19:15 to allow for a prompt start

This talk will also be Simulcast on our YouTube Channel

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“Searching for Kilonovae in the nearby Universe” 

The LIGO-Virgo gravitational wave detectors carried out the their third observing run (called O3) during 2019-2020. Many black hole mergers were detected, along with one confident binary neutron star merger and a possible black hole – neutron star system. At the same time, wide-field optical sky surveys are discovering a remarkable diversity in how stars merge, collapse and explode. Only one gravitational wave source has had a discovery of an electromagnetic counterpart.

In 2017 a a pair of merging neutron stars produced what we now call a kilonova (“a thousand novas”!). This was a remarkably fast transient, which decayed in a matter of days.  Many surveys have been searching for these kilonovae without success but given they can be as bright as supernovae they should be detectable irrespective of gravitational wave signals. I will discuss our efforts to uncover this new class of object and reasons why we haven’t found them yet. 

Stephen Smartt is a professor of astrophysics at Queen’s University. He has worked at the Isaac Newton Group of telescopes on La Palma and the University of Cambridge. He leads several international projects, mostly focused on regularly surveying the sky to find anything that changes and his group manage the large scale data processing of two NASA funded surveys. He has discovered supernova progenitors, the faintest supernovae and most luminous explosions as well as mergers of compact stars. In 2018 he was awarded the Royal Irish Academy’s Gold Medal and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2020.

Paul Evans is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: IAA Prof Stephen Smartt
Time: Jan 6, 2021 07:15 PM London

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This talk will also be Simulcast on our YouTube Channel

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Abstract:
The direct detection of gravitational waves from merging black holes and neutron stars using the Ligoand Virgo detectors is one of humankind’s greatest triumphs. However, the exact position in the skyof these bursts is not well constrained, often to within hundreds or more square degrees.

For merging neutrons stars, it was predicted that an electromagnetic counterpart would be visible. If this could be identified then so would the location of the merging event. The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) is a project whose goal is to detect these optical counterparts of gravitational wave events. One prototype has been running on the island of La Palma for more than 2 years, but next year will see a second array on La Palma, with two more nodes in Siding Spring being planned. 

Bio:
Gavin did his PhD at UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory using data from the Rosat X-ray satellite to study magnetic accreting binaries. After several years at the University of Utrecht, he returned to MSSL, and came to Armagh in 2007.

He still studies accreting binaries, but has led several wide field photometric surveys and also uses Kepler and TESS data to study the activity levels of Solar type and low mass stars. He leads Armaghs contribution to the GOTO project.

Paul Evans is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: IAA – Dr Gavin Ramsay
Time: Dec 16, 2020 07:15 PM London

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The room will open at approximately 19:15 to get everyone in for a 19:30 sharp start.

The meeting will also be simulcast on our YouTube Channel

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“Adventures in the Outer Solar System”

Abstract:
In this talk we will Zoom (pun intended) to the outer solar system to
explore the gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. I will furnish the
audience with plenty of fun facts about the amazing worlds of dynamic
auroral displays, diverse moons, and mysterious atmospheres. I will
focus on some of the famous spacecraft including Cassini which spent 13
years exploring the Saturn system, and NASA’s Juno which is currently in
orbit around Jupiter.

Bio:
Dr. Caitriona Jackman is an Honorary Professor at the Dublin Institute
for Advanced Studies where she leads a research group on Planetary
Magnetospheres. She has worked with data from missions including NASA’s Cassini at Saturn, ESA’s Cluster mission in orbit around Earth, NASA’s Juno at Jupiter, and with data from the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Her research interests include understanding how the aurora works, and how machine learning and complexity science can be used to study huge volumes of data from space.

Paul Evans is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: IAA – Prof Caitriona Jackman
Time: Dec 2, 2020 07:15 PM London

Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 897 0423 4875
Passcode: 551722

The room will open at approximately 19:15 to get everyone in for a 19:30 sharp start.

The meeting will also be simulcast on our YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/user/irishastronomy/videos