The end of NAM 2011

I found myself ending the National Astronomy Meeting on a galactic note before the journey home. Thursday morning focussed on the astronomical research of the Herschel Space Observatory (you can read more about the HSO here and here and the physics of galaxies, both at high and low redshifts.

A word that I kept hearing while in the Galaxy session was ‘dust’. But the speakers were not referring to the dust that you find on your sideboard at home, they were talking about a different kind altogether – cosmic dust. I caught up with Dr. Haley. Gomez, a dust expert at Cardiff University, who told me more about the space particles which seems to exist throughout the Universe. You can watch my interview with Dr. Gomez below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jebX8EjrRVo&feature=channel_video_title

You can also check out the article here

Here ends a successful National Astronomy meeting – Thank you to the Royal Astronomical Society who organised the conference in such a beautiful part of Wales and of course, thank you to the scientists with their presentations on cutting-edge astronomy research. The meeting was a pleasure to attend.

Here’s to NAM 2012 - which will be held in Manchester!

Astronomy Now meet team Herschel

The Herschel Space Observatory and its work involving the dust in galaxies, was a prominent subject in the Thursday morning Galaxies session at the National Astronomy Meeting.

In the break between talks at the conference, we managed to get a snap of the Herschel team in front of the Herschel Space Observatory model. Below is a photograph of the team, with Astronomy Now reporter, Gemma Lavender (far right):

Saturn causes a storm

Astronomy Now's Keith Cooper talks to Oxford University's Dr Leigh Fletcher at the RAS' National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales, about observations of a giant storm on Saturn that has erupted on the ringed planet.

Cosmic-rays are accelerated by supernova remnants

One of the topics that came up in the Astroparticle Physics session at the National Astronomical Meeting, was that supernova remnants are cosmic-ray accelerators. This was presented by Brian Reville of Oxford University.

According to Reville, the majority of cosmic rays are accelerated in supernova remnants. It is believed that the most promising mechanism for generating and maintaining the non-thermal spectrum is by diffuse shock acceleration. Reville referred to this as the first-order Fermi process.

We have made considerable progress with regard to multi-wavelength observations of supernova remnants which are quite nearby. But evidence for cosmic-ray acceleration seemingly remains elusive. "Cosmic rays are a one hundred year old problem," says Reville.

However, over recent years, one of the major advances has been the detection of strongly amplified magnetic fields in the vicinity of the shock of a supernova remnant.  Here's a paper by Reville, which explains the concept quite nicely: http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2010PAP/pdf/O4.415.pdf

Reville concluded, with recent developments, that: "The holy grail is to get signals from hadron collisions in remnants."

Solar observing on the seafront

It's not all been hardcore astrophysics, jargon and graphs at NAM – members of Liverpool Astronomical Society stopped by for a session of solar observing outside the conference centre, here on the Llandudno seafront. Professional astronomers queued to catch a glimpse of the Sun through a Coronado PST, which in clear blue skies showed prominences, filaments, sunspots and active regions. It was a rare opportunity for the professionals to take a look through a telescope – much of their work is spent receiving reams of data from automated telescopes, or observatories in other countries such as Hawaii and Chile while remaining at their desks in the UK. Liverpool AS run successful 'sidewalk astronomy' events all over Merseyside and nearby regions, engaging the public in the wonder of astronomy – you can visit their website here. Their solar session at NAM was also an excellent complement to the heavy solar physics coverage at the meeting.