Radio Astronomy - Dr Sadie Jones

Dr Sadie Jones is Outreach Leader in Astronomy at the University of Southampton. She has recently finished her PhD in black holes and radio astronomy. Sadie's PhD work involved tackling radio astronomy problems/projects/black holes with the Astronomical Image Processing System (AIPS).

http://www.astro.soton.ac.uk/~s.jones/aboutus.html

Talk abstract: Sadie will talk about her black hole research, radio astronomy and LOFAR. Work on the Seyfert 1 AGN NGC 4051 used data from the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, USA and the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) to look for a correlation between the Radio and X-ray regimes at the core of this source, where the black hole is. The Chilbolton 96 radio antennae LOFAR site is part of the European LOFAR project (Low Frequency Array). LOFAR is a radio telescope working at the lowest frequencies accessible from Earth. LOFAR combines many thousands of simple dipole receivers (just like the one in your radio at home) with the latest in high tech computing. LOFAR will be able to survey wide areas of the sky all at once and will open up a new window for astronomers.

The Vectis Astronomical Society meets on the 4th Friday of every month, except for December. This event is open for non-members to attend.

The speakers come from all over the country and give a presentation for around 45mins. We then stop for a break with tea and biscuits, which gives an opportunity to mingle and chat. The second half of the evening sees a presentation by one of our regular members showing us what to we could see in the sky over the coming month.

This always involves some great pictures projected onto the large screen. Entry to the event is free of charge, although as we run as a charity, donations are always welcome.

Newsletters are available at the entrance for a suggested donation of £2.00

Please see our website for contact and membership details.