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2010
AuScope VLBI Project

The School of Mathematics & Physics is excited to be involved in the "AuScope VLBI Project" and on Tuesday, February 9, 2010, our new telescope, located in the grounds of our Mount Pleasant 26 m radio telescope, was officially opened by the Governor of Tasmania, The Honourable Peter Underwood AC.  

For information regarding the AuScope VLBI Project read here.

We will be reporting soon on new students and what projects they will be undertaking in 2010.
 

2007




Welcome to Undergraduate Research Student in Astrophysics
We welcome Jay Blanchard & Anita Titmarsh, third year physics and astronomy students, to the astrophysics research group. Both Jay and Anita will be undertaking a research project with Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt.



UTas wins bid to host Inaugural Australian Theoretical Astrophysics Summer School
UTas has won the bid to host the Inaugural Austronomical Society of Australia Summer School on Theoretical Astrophysics. The 2 week school will take place on the Cradle Coast Campus in Burnie in Jan 2008 and will draw a selection of the world's best theoretical astrophysicists and 50 PhD students and Australian academics to UTas for the event. The bid put together by Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt comprised $15,000 in cash and over $20,000 in kind from UTas and regional partners. This will be supplemented by and additional $35,000 from other sources. The bid beat some tough competition from GO8 university, UWA and the event is bound to be a highlight on the Australian Astronomical communities calendar. Dr Johnston-Hollitt has susequently been appointed a member of the SOC and will chair the LOC.



Scholarship Success
Congratulations to 3rd year student Simon Areaud for being awarded a full scholarship to attend the ANSTO Winter School on Nuclear Physics in Sydney. Simon was selected as the UTas representative to attend the week long school held over the July break. The annual winter school run by ANSTO gives students from a diverse ranges of disciplines including, physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, geology and medicine the chance to learn about cutting edge technology in nuclear science and it's applications.



New Astrophysics Satff
Dr Jim Lovell has commenced a position as project scientist for the $7M AuScope telescopes being built by UTas under part of the successful Geosciences Australia NCRIS bid. Jim completed his PhD at UTas and was previously at ATNF. He has a long history with vlbi and intraday variability. Jim commenced his position with UTas in March and will be based in Canberra at Geosciences Australia until June when he will move to Hobart. Welcome back Jim!



Astrophysics Scholarship Success!
Congratulations are due to four honours students for 2007 for obtaining prestigious scholarships. Anne-Marie Brick who completed her undergraduate degree at Monash University was awarded a UTas Honours Scholarship worth $9,500 - this was one of only 10 given out across the entire University. Rob Gregor who completed his undergraduate degree in physics at Murdoch University was also awarded one of the 4 UTas Honours scholarships worth $4,500. Minnie Mao who completed her undergraduate degree at Monash and James Gill who completed his degree at UTas were both awarded Dave Warren Scholarships in Astrophysics worth $4,500. Minnie, Anne-Marie and James are all former scholars of the Summer Research program in Astrophysics at UTas; James and Anne-Marie were students over the 2005/2006 summer and Minnie was a student over the 2006/2007 summer. All four students will be working on projects under the supervision on Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt.



Welcome to 2007 Honours students in Astrophysics
There are seven honours students in astrophysics for 2007. Tristan Brookes will be working with Dr John Greenhill and Associate Professor Peter Jarvis on statistical detection methods for extrasolar planets using mircolensing. Shaun Inglis will be working with Dr Simon Ellingsen and Professor Larry Forbes on modelling of ultra-compact HII regions. Ben Lewis will be working with Dr Simon Ellingsen on a maser survey. Anne-Marie Brick, Rob Gregor, James Gill and Minnie Mao will all be working under the supervision of Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt on research associated with galaxy clusters. Anne-Marie will be undertaking a multi-wavelength analysis of A3128 to understand the putative radio relic. Rob will be examining the polarisation of double the relics in A3667 & A3376. James is determining the Radio Luminosity Function of the Horologium-Reticulum Supercluster and Minnie's project is entitled "Head-Tailed Galaxies as Barometers of Cluster Weather." Welcome to all these students and especially, Minnie, Anne-Marie & Rob who completed their undergraduate degrees at other universities.



2006


Staff Promotion
Congratulations to Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt who was promoted in the 2006 academic promotions round.



New PhD Students
Welcome to our 2007 PhD students, Shari Breen, Sol Jacobsen & Luke Yate. Shari will be working with Dr Simon Ellingsen and Dr Jim Caswell (ATNF) to investigate the use of masers are tracers of massive star formation. Luke and Sol will both join the theorectial physics group under the supervision of Associate Professor Peter Jarvis.



Astrophysics Summer Students
Welcome to our 2006/2007 summer students! This year we are pleased to have Ms Minnie Mao (Monash), Ms Anita Titmarsh (UTas), Mr Andrew Pilgrim (UTas), Mr Simon Arneaud (UTas) and Mr Jay Blanchard (UTas). Minnie, Anita, Simon and Andrew will all be working under the supervision of Dr Aidan Hotan and Dr Jamie Stevens on aspects of the Mt Pleasant observatory upgrade. Jay will be working with Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt on understanding the ionospheric contribution to extragalactic Faraday Rotation measures.



Astrophysics Grant Success

Congratulations to the following staff members who have recently been successful in obtaining research grants:

Prof John Dickey, Dr Simon Ellingsen & Prof Peter McCulloch
ARC Discovery Grant
"Radio Interferometer Studies of Compact Astronomical Sources"



Astrophysics Scholarship Success
Congratulations to 3rd year student James Gill for being awarded a summer scholarship at the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Sydney and Honours student Warren Hankey who was awarded a grant to attend the Synthesis Imaging Workshop at the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility in Narrabri, NSW.



UTas plays vital role in Moon Mission!
The 26m Mt Pleasant telescope was one of a nextwork of radio telescopes to recently observe the impact of the European Space Agency's SMART-1 probe when it hit the surface of the moon.  Telescopes from Australia (ATCA, Mt Pleasant, Chile (TIGO), Brazil (Fortaleza), Finland (HUT) and Italy (Medicina) were combined in a VLBI network to observe the historic imapct. Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr Jamie Stevens and Technician, Brett Reid recorded the event on Sunday 3rd of September. The Mt Pleasant telescope and the Brazilan instrument were the only two to actually record the impact which reuired instruments at extreme Southerly declinations. Data from the experiment is expected to assist with understanding the composition of the Luna surface. More information here.


Astrophysics Scholarship Success
Congratulations to honours student Warren Hankey and 3rd Year students James Gill & Kylie Haugstetter for being awarded full scholarships to attend the Swinburne University of Technology Winter School on Astrophysics. Warren, James and Kylie, who have all been working on galaxy clusters under the supervision of Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt,  will spend 2 days in Melbourne at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing  over the winter break learning about modern astronomical data visualisation before returning to UTas to continue their studies.


UTas Astrophysicist Wins Vice-Chancellor's Award

Congratulations to Dr Kym Hill for winning the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Exceptional Performance by a General Staff Member. The prize of $5,000 will enable Dr Hill to obtain further professional training.


Scholarship Success
Congratulations to 3rd year student James Gill for being awarded a full scholarship to attend the ANSTO Winter School on Nuclear Physics in Sydney. James was selected as the UTas representative to attend the week long school held over the July break. The annual winter school run by ANSTO gives students from a diverse ranges of disciplines including, physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, geology and medicine the chance to learn about cutting edge technology in nuclear science and it's applications.



UTas Astrophysicist Wins Faculty Research Prize

Congratulations to Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt for winning the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology Early Career Researcher Prize. Dr Johnston-Hollitt won this prize for her work on understanding the dynamics and evolution of galaxy clusters. The prize of $5,000 will be presented by the Governor of Tasmania at a function on the 29th of March.
Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt
XMM Time Granted to UTas Astrophysicst

Congratulations to principal investigator Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt and her collaborators Dr Alexis Finoguenov (MPE & UMaryland) & Dr Francesco Miniati (Zurich) for obtaining time on the XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope to study the dynamical properties of a merging cluster of galaxies. Time on space telescopes is very hard to obtain with proposals typically required to be in the best 15% of those submitted to be successful.



UTas Astronomers Part of International Team to Detect Rocky Extrasolar Planet

An international team of 73 astronomers, of which 3 are from the astrophysics group at the University of Tasmania, have reported the discovery of a 5.5 Earth-mass extrasolar planet at  about 3 AU from the parent star. The represents the first discovery of an Earth-like terrestial or "rocky" planet orbiting sufficiently far from the parent star that it would be possible (although unlikely) to support life and it is only the 3rd detection of a planet using the technique of microlensing. Results of the work were published in the 25th of Jan, 2006 edition of the Journal Nature.
Further information is available off the Nature website.

Light curve Lightcurve of the microlensing event which detected the Earth-like planet OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb.
Insert: The solid curve is the best binary lens model described in the text with q = 7.6 plusminus 0.7 times 10 -5 , and a projected separation of d = 1.610 plusminus 0.008 R E . The dashed grey curve is the best binary source model that is rejected by the data, and the dashed orange line is the best single lens model.
From Beaulieu J.P., et al . Nature , 439 . 437 - 440 (2006)
Artists Impression of extrasolar planet
Artists impression of the extrasolar planet OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb orbiting it's parent M-dwarf star. Credit G. Bacon STScI.


2005


Astrophysics Grant Success

Congratulations to the following staff members who have recently been successful in obtaining research grants:

Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt
University of Tasmania Internal Research Grant Scheme
"Understanding Environmental Effects on Radio Emission in Clusters of Galaxies"
Dr John Greenhill & Dr Stefan Dieters
University of Tasmania Internal Research Grant Scheme
"Searching for Planetary Systems About Other Stars"



Welcome to Undergraduate Research Student in Astrophysics
We welcome James Gill, a third year physics and astronomy student, to the astrophysics research group. James will be undertaking a research project with Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt to analyse statistical properties of a multi-ojbect spectroscopic data of the galaxy cluster A3376 taken with the Anglo-Australian Observatory. This research is part of a larger multi-wavelength study of the cluster being undertaken by Dr Johnston-Hollitt and her collaborators.


Welcome to Astrophysics Summer Students
Welcome to Madhura Kiledar, Tim Dolley and Anne-Marie Brick, three astrophysics students selected for our summer scholarship program. Madhura is from the University of Sydney and will be working with Dr Johnston-Hollitt, Tim is from Monash University and will be working with Aidan Hotan and Anne-Marie is from Monash University and will be working with Dr Stevens. Tim and Anne-Marie will arrive at the start of December and Madhura will arrive in January.



Physics Students Selected for Astrophysics Scholarship
Congratulations to honours student Shari Breen for being selected as a summer vacation scholar at the Australia Telescope National Facility in Sydney and to Sally Long, a third year Physics student who has been selected as a summer vacation scholar at the the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics at ANU.  Shari and Sally will spend 10-12 weeks working with leading astromomers over the summer, before returning to UTas to continue their studies.



Astrophysics Grant Success

Congratulations to the following staff members who have recently been successful in obtaining research grants:

Dr Simon Ellingsen, Professor John Dickey & collaborators
ARC special initivate grant on E-reseach:
"Real-Time Very Long Baseline Interferometry"



New Postdoctoral Appointments in Radio Astronomy

Two new postdocs have bee appointed to the radio astronomy group at UTas. Dr Jamie Stevens and Aidan Hotan.
Aidan's background is in pulsar timing and Jamie's has worked on HI in galaxy groups and with the new Low Frequency Demonstrator in WA. Aidan commences his appointment on August 8th and Jamie will begin on August 29th. Both will be working on upgrades to the 26m telescope at Mt Pleasant.



Welcome to Undergraduate Research Student in Astrophysics
We welcome Simon Arneaud, a first year physics student, to the astrophysics research group. Simon will be undertaking a research project with Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt & Chris Hollitt to build and test different types of infra-red cloud detectors for astronomical purposes.



Student Poster Wins Prize

Congratulations to Cliff Senkbeil whos poster "The Southern IDV Survey" won second prize in the Astronomical Society of Australia's annual graduate student poster competion


Welcome to Undergraduate Research Student in Astrophysics

We welcome Lewis Tunstall, a first year physics and astronomy student, to the astrophysics research group. Lewis will be undertaking a research project with Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt to analyse multi-ojbect spectroscopic data of the galaxy cluster A3376 taken with the Anglo-Australian Observatory. This research is part of a larger multi-wavelength study of the cluster being undertaken by Dr Johnston-Hollitt and her collaborators.



Honours Student Grant Success

Congratulations to honours student Clair Murrowood for successfully obtaining travel grants totally $700 to attend the Annual General Meeting of the Astronomical Society of Australia in Sydney in July. Clair will present a poster
"Structure in the Horologium-Reticulum Supercluster" at the meeting.



Welcome CSIRO Research Student

We welcome to Mat Creese from the Hutchins High School to the astrophysics research group. Mat has been selected as a student in the CSIRO student research scheme which allows final year students with an interest in science to spend some time working on a short research project with an local scientist. Mat will be working with Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt on a research project to investiagte the dynamical properties of the galaxy cluster A4059.



Mt Canopus Observatory to Support NASA's Deep Impact Mission

This year see the second installment of UTas telescopes playing a support role to space missions. The first was the crucial participation of the University's radio telescopes at Cambridge, Tasmania and Ceduna, South Australia in the Doppler Winds Experiment conducted as part of the Huygens probe mission to Saturn's largest moon Titan in January. The second will see the Mt Canopus telescope provide ground based support to the NASA "Deep Impact" mission. This mission will seek to discover what really lies inside comet Temple -1 by blowing a hole in it! The aims of the mission are to:
1. observe how the crater forms,
2. measure the crater's depth and diameter,
3. measure the composition of the interior of the crater and its ejecta and
4. determine the changes in natural outgassing produced by the impact.

The actually imapct will occur on July 4th but the Mt Canopus telescope will start monitoring the object several weeks before that and then for several weeks after. Further details of the mission can be found here . For further details of the role that Canopus will play please contact, UTas, senior research scientist Dr Kym Hill (Kym.Hill at utas.edu.au).
Temple 1
Comet Temple-1 at a distance of 39.7 million miles. Taken on April 25, 2005. Copyright NASA/JPL


Altium Donation Provides Astrophysics Scholarship Opportunities

Altium Pty Ltd have signed up to work with radio astronomers at the University of Tasmania to work on two exciting new experiments involving the Mt Pleasant radio telescope. As part of this work Altium have donated funds and in-kind project assistance worth over $150, 000. Part of the money will go toward funding two PhD scholarships in radio astronomy starting in 2006. Further details can be obtained from the Altium press resease - click on the link to the right.
ALTIUM PRESS RELEASE
Click to download


NASA Award of Recognition

Congratulations to Dr Stefan Dieters for recieving a NASA Award of Recognition for his contribution to the discovery of magnetars. Dr Dieters was one of  a team of 11 people responsible for the 1998 discovery of magnetars, stars with extreme magnetic fields. The discovery was published in a paper in Nature Kouveliotou et al, volume 393, p235-237 (1998).



More Astrophysics Grant Success

Congratulations to the following staff members who have recently been successful in obtaining research grants:

Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt ANSTO Access to Major Research Facilities grant
" The connection between radio galaxies and cluster formation: Deep radio observations of the highest redshift galaxy clusters"



Astrophysics Scholarship Success

Congratulations are due to several of our astrophysics students for their success in obtaining scholarships for 2005. Succesful students include Ms Claire Trenham who obtained and APA to undertake a PhD on modelling properties of the Interstellar Medium with Professor John Dickey and Professor Larry Forbes; Mr Cliff Senkbiel who obtained an APAI for a PhD in radio astronomy with Professor Peter McCulloch and Dr Simon Ellingsen; Ms Clair Murrowood who won the 2005 Dave Warren Honours Scholarship in Optical Astronomy to study the Horologium-Reticulum Supercluster with Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt and Mr Jan Zika who won the 2005 Radio Astronomy Scholarship to study with Dr Simon Ellingsen and Professor Larry Forbes. (Also Ms Lisa Miller won the 2005 school of Mathematics and Physics Honours scholarship and is undertaking honours in statistics with Dr Wotherspoon.)




Astrophysics Grant Success

Congratulations to the following staff members who have recently been successful in obtaining research grants:

Prof. John Dickey, Prof. Larry Forbes & Dr Simon Ellingson (+ collaborators)
ARC Linkage, Infrastructure, Equipment  & Facilities Grant
"A 10 Gbit/s Fibre Optic Link to Mt Pleasant & Mt Canopus Observatories"
Prof. John Dickey ARC Discovery Grant
"Transient Astronomical Sources at Radio Frequencies:"
Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt University of Tasmania Internal Research Grant Scheme
"Understanding Dynamical Processes in Clusters & Superclusters of Galaxies"


Visitor to the Astrophysics Group

From mid-November until the start of January the Matthew Fleenor from the University of North Carolina, USA will visit the astrophysics group. While here Matt will work with Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt on multi-wavelength analysis of the Horologium--Reticulum Supercluster.



Welcome to Astrophysics Summer Students

Welcome to Mayumi Sato, Steve Ambrose and Min-Young Lee, three astrophysics students selected for our summer scholarship program. Mayumi is from Keio University, Japan and will be working with Dr Johnston-Hollitt, Min-Young is from Yonsei University, Korea and will be working with Dr Cimo and Steve is from UTas and will be working with Prof Dickey.


Mt Pleasant and Ceduna Telescopes Take Part in Cassini-Huygens Mission

The Mt Pleasant and Ceduna radio telescopes operated by the discipline of physics are gearing up to participate in the  NASA operated Cassini-Huygens space probe mission which is examining the rings of Saturn and the moon Titan. The spacecraft which as already returned amazingly detailed data about the rings of Saturn will soon launch the Huygens probe to the surface of Titan. Tracking for part of the mission has been entrusted to the Mt Pleasant and Ceduna radio telescopes. Currently testing is underway to ensure we record the data for the probe's mission. The timeline of the mission is as follows:

Dec. 25, 2004: Huygens probe separates from the Cassini orbiter and begins its 21 day journey to Titan. 

Jan. 14, 2005: Huygens begins its descent through Titan's atmosphere and will land on the surface about two and half hours later.

Further details about the mission are on the NASA website and the Cassini-Huygens site .

Huygens Probe Launch

"Huygens probe jettison. In this artist's rendition, the Huygens probe is finally ejected by the Cassini spacecraft and begins its 22-day coast phase toward Titan." Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.

2004


Physics Student Selected for Astrophysics Scholarship

Congratulations to Clair Murrowood, a third year Physics student who has been selected as a summer vacation Scholar at the Anglo-Australia Observatory, NSW.  Clair will spend 10-12 weeks at the AAO headquarters in Sydney working with leading optical astromomers over the summer, before returning to UTas to continue her studies.


New Associate Lecturer in Physics
From December 2004 the Discipline of Physics will have a new lecturer, Dr Stefan Dieters . Stefan is an astrophysicist whos principal research interestes are X-ray binaries. Stefan completed his PhD on " Hard X-ray observations of Sco X-1 and GX 1+4 " at the University of Tasmania in 1990. Prior to commencing at the University of Tasmania, Dr Dieters held several positions in the United States and Europe.


New Professor of Astrophysics

The University of Tasmania has recently appointed Professor John Dickey as the chair of Radio Astronomy in the Discipline of Physics. John arrived shortly after the start of the second semester this year to take up his position. John's research area is radio spectroscopy of the Milky Way and nearby galaxies. His specialty is 21-cm line studies of the atomic hydrogen in the interstellar medium. In addition he is the principal investigator of the Southern Galactic Plane Survey, a large project to survey the 21-cm emission and absorption from the inner Milky Way galaxy using the Australia Telescope National Facility telescopes and Parkes and Narrabri in New South Wales. You can read more about John's work on his personal page.
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New Associate Lecturer in Physics

From July 2004 the Discipline of Physics will have a new lecturer, Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt. Melanie is an astrophysicist whos principal research interestes are clusters and superclusters of galaxies and cosmic magnetic fields. Prior to commencing at the University of Tasmania, Dr Johnston-Hollit worked as a LOFAR Fellow in the Netherlands. More details of Melanie's research and other interests can be found on her personal webpage.
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