Meet...Dr Sadie Jones

I appeared in the University of Southampton, Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering Newsletter this month :)

Meet...Dr Sadie Jones Can you tell us about yourself and your role within Physics and Astronomy? I work as the Outreach Leader in Astronomy. My job involves managing a group of PhD and Undergraduate Astronomy students who work with the mobile planetarium. We go out into schools to do shows for Primary - A–level student groups, and also do shows on campus for events like Open Days and BBC Stargazing Live. What do you think are the benefits of the outreach work carried out in the department? I think its important to show students of all ages in local schools what real scientists in the UoS look like and also it's important for the students to realise that scientists are just normal people and that science is a realistic job prospect for them. There are still so many questions we don't know the answer to so it is important we inspire the next generation of physicists and astronomers to further our understanding of the Universe. Can you tell us about some of the activities you carry out in the outreach team? We go out into schools twice a week during term time with the mobile planetarium. I also give a talks on aliens for primary level which features inflatable planets and I give a talk on Supermassive Black holes for GCSE, A-level and Astronomy societies, which focuses on my PhD research. I am especially excited because I will be joining the UoS Roadshow at Bestival talking about the INTEGRAL gamma ray telescope and other UoS astrophysics  research to the festival goers. Are you enjoying being a science correspondent on BBC Radio Solent? Yes, It's really fun. I enjoy doing the background research on the 3 science stories and it's an adrenaline rush to explain them live on radio when I don't know what questions I will be asked about the stories.  I am learning so much more about recent UK science news as a result and I hope the listeners learn more too. If you want to keep up to date on all the latest news from the Astronomy Outreach team your can follow them on Twitter @SotonAstrodome

Meeting Sir Patrick Moore

Sir Patrick Moore & Me, at his garden party.

I was lucky enough to attend a garden party at Sir Patrick Moores house, a few weekends ago :). The party was a fundraising event to send students from an afterschool science STEMclub at Cantell Maths and Computing College in Southampton  to NASA in the US of A. It was a great success the weather was lovely and Sir Patrick seemed rather cheerful. He wished me luck with my PhD which I thought was amazingly cool, and alot of money was raised, so hopefully the kids will have no problem getting to NASA. I have been lucky enough to go to the Kennedy Space centre myself a few years ago, it really was awesome. Discovery was on the launchpad when I was there :) Didnt see the launch though, I did however see alot of crocodiles at the centre, which was un-expected, and I have told the STEM kids this and hopefully they will be weary of them crocs. (If Steve Irwin has taught me nothing else, it is that crocs are to be taken seriously, and very probably feared, anyway I digress...).

I have worked for over 3 years with this Year 9 STEM club. The first 2 projects were on Aliens and life in our universe, this project was great and the end of the project I presented the kids with a gift that allowed them to send their own message into space. The message they decided on was  'Welcome to earth we make nice tea', which I thought was a nice message, and very English, i do hope it was Yorkshire Gold tea we will be giving those aliens mind, as only the best will do..even for none humans.... The most recent project I devised was a galaxy project which involves the students using GalaxyZoo and various worksheets to understand the different types of galaxies which exist. At the end of the project the team present their work to  their classmates, teachers and other academics. The students talk was very good and at the end of the project the students (girls) revealed how their work has made them realise the 'vastness of space', they were shocked at how big the universe is and all the things it is comprised of and , and I assume that now, like me, they consequently feel very insignificant in comparison to the universe.

Questions 

When offered various science projects,  based on Galaxies, Chemistry of the ISS, exercise bikes that power mobile discos and sound vibration projects do only girls pick the one on Galaxies?

Launching a creme egg into space

This talk is aimed at GCSE/A-Level students... I wish to expand their knowledge of Weight, Mass and Gravity. Particuarly Newtowns Universal Law of Gravitation.

Why?

So..why do I want to launch a creme egg into space firstly?

Well I love creme eggs and recently had to have a rather large tooth out as result of the decay caused by the sweet lovely creme eggs. As I was sat last week watching Discovery, in alot of pain......as Discovery made it's final flight to the International Space Station, I came to the revelation, the only way I will stop eating creme eggs is if they are not everywhere, i.e. in bookshops, at tills in Boots, etc, they needed to be removed from Earth so as not to tempt me. The only way that made sense as I watched Discovery shoot into space was to launch the creme eggs into space aswell....

The first thing I need to think about is the Forces that are acting on the creme egg.....and how I can create a force big enough to overpower the force of gravity acting on the egg which is 'forcing' it toward the surface of Earth.

What is gravity?

Gravity is an attractive force between all objects that have mass. This means that two students in a class sat next to each other have an attractive force between them, this doesn't mean they 'fancy' each other it means their mass is causing a gravitational force to act between them. However, this force between two classmates is very small..but for big masses like that of the Earth. We do feel a gravitational force, and this force causes all objects on earth to accelerate toward the surface at 9.8 metres per second.

When you ask your friend their weight, if they don't take you to be very rude, they will most likely answer with a value in Kgs or stone. What they actually give you is their Mass, not their Weight.

Weight is a Force, which like all forces is equivalent to the product of Mass and acceleration.

In the case of a body of mass being acted on by the force of gravity, the gravitational acceleration (g) is equal to 9.8 metres per second...

Why is g=9.8m/s ?

Well the value of g (acceleration of gravity) we all know and love represents an speed increase of about 10 metres per second per second. But why is it 9.8/10 ? where does this value actually come from???

It actually depends on the planet! 

Why? Because the planet is the large mass causing other smaller masses to accelerate toward it....It's the big mass causing the attraction.

So the value of g actually comes from equating Weight (which equals mg) to Newtown's gravitational force. This force depends on G, which is a gravitational constant , the mass of earth which is largest, the mass of the object we are trying to launch into space (or the object falling toward the earth)....divided by the distance between the centre of masses of the two masses...

In the case of the creme egg which we are trying to launch into space the distance (R), in the gravitational force equation is approximately the distance from the centre of the earth to the centre of the creme egg, which we can assume is basically the radius of the earth...

When we substitute all these values into the Newtowns force equation, firstly we notice that the mass of the creme egg cancels out, so the acceleration, g, is the same for all objects accelerating toward earth...10 metres per second squared!!!!

g only.. depends on the mass and radius of the larger mass object

What do we know about the Creme egg ?

How will we launch it?

I am assuming my arm is so strong that I can give the egg enough kinetic energy upwards to over come the force of gravity acting downwards.

Want ke bigger than potential energy, potential energy is energy creme egg would gain from being dropped from a certain height or extended radius from earth.

Think about when your at the top of the hill on your bike, takes alot less energy from your legs to get to the bottom this is cos of the potential energy you gain from working in direction of gravity. When you work against gravity going up hill have to overcome this gravitational force, which requires more kinetic energy from your legs, and will burn more calories... (calories are just a unit of energy).

To launch the creme egg into orbit we want to give it a k.e. energy larger than the potential energy it would have at the height of 'space'.


When you equate the p.e. and the k.e. you notice the m, mass of the creme egg cancels out. You can then re-arrange the equation to make v, the velocity the creme egg needs to escape the gravitational down force of earth and get into 'space'.

Subbing in the values for G, M (mass of earth) and R( radius of earth)... we first notice that the escape velocity is the same for any object, and is independent of the mass of the object, in this case the creme eggs mass....

Therefore if you can get any object to a speed of 11.2km per second.... it should get into space.

Of course, it will be alot harder to get an elephant to that speed than it will to get a creme egg to that speed :).

The speed to escape from Earth's gravity, is called the escape velocity and is 34 times the speed of sound...planes, such as a Boeing 747 travel at 560mph, therefore we need the creme egg to travel 45 times faster than a plane...

....basically, this is going to be a massive challenge.

You will realise that NASA shuttles/rockets like Discovery do not actually travel this fast...
....the escape velocity assume you give the object/creme egg this speed and it continues at this speed through atmosphere, with no loss of speed due to friction....
...... the shuttle has fuel which allows it to accelerate and increase its speed at various points, it also looses mass as it uses up this fuel, which means it does not need to travel at 11.2kms per second. They actually travel about 6,250mph.


So.....if you can give the creme egg enough energy to set it off from the surface of earth at 11.2 km per second (and it doesn't get slowed down by friction) it WILL get into space!!!


But, we are forgetting something. The shuttle is heavily shielded because it heats up going in and out of the layers of the atmosphere....the speed it goes is proportional to the heat encountured.


 Shielding designers actually use the relation that the temperature is approximately 1000 times the velocity... therefore our creme egg will have to withstand a temperature of 11,200 degrees C..... 


It's not looking good for our creme egg getting into orbit is it?

Questions
When I gave this talk I offered the creme egg which I was using as a prop to the best question. But no one actually wanted to eat the creme egg, (which I thought was quite rude). So of course I had to eat it........
...:)



There's probably a moral to this story some where, so if anyone has any questions or knows what the moral is please do comment below...


the moral of the story?


Anyway! I had some tough questions like , 'what is gravity?'
'what is a force?' 
I am just going to let you ponder on those, as I am not convinced my answers actually helped the people asking them......
.... :S



Suggestions for the future
It has been suggested that I remove alot of the equations from this talk because they are likely to scare GCSE students...I can't remember that far back into my past, but I love equations so I am biased? Thoughts?

Radio Astronomy & LOFAR Talk at Brookfield School

I gave the talk to an after-school astronomy club, consisting manily of year 9's on an accelerated GCSE program. There were 7 students present and their teacher. The talk was ~45-50minutes long with questions at the end which lasted a further 15 mins. The students also asked many questions during the talk.

Talk Overview 

The talk was mainly about Radio Astronomy in general and why LOFAR is such a new exciting telescope. I begin with why I myself got into astronomy, from my GCSE's, then into the electromagnetic spectrum, explaining that radio has the longest wavelength. 

Talking about radio waves follows into my radio research using the Very Large Array (VLA) telescope in New Mexico, USA . I try to explain how interferometry works. High angular resolution is particularly important for looking at the active galaxies (galaxies with an active centre i.e. jets spurting out from galaxy) because astronomers still don't know how jets work. Seeing deep into the core of the galaxy where the jet is will help astronomers to understand what is happening. I also explain the 2 different types of black holes; supermassive and binary, with a major focus on active supermassive black holes which I study.

M87- Jet in active galaxy- resolution increasing.

From my research where I investigate the relations between X-ray radiation from the disk of active galaxies to Radio from the jets of active galaxies, I go into talking about LOFAR.




LOFAR


LOFAR is a real-time multiple sensor array, specifically designed to detect radio emission below 240MHz. It's a revolutionary device in that utilises electronic beam steering rather than mechanical pointing and uses low-cost dipole antenna instead of as the dish type antennas of the VLA. The base of array is in the Netherlands, and when complete will consist of 36 apeture array stations distributed over an area with a diameter over 100km. Several international stations have been built in UK, Germany, France and Sweden, achieving resolutions of 0.2 arcseconds, with the largest baselines across Europe of the order of 1500 kms.  I was lucky enough to help build many of the Low Band Antenna (LBA) at the LOFAR UK station during June 2010, (see Image below). One of the Key Science goals of LOFAR is the Epoch of Reinoisation which is the time at the beginning of the universe, when it was a few hundred million years old (about a twentieth of its current age) and objects started to form out of the plasma of the Big Bang!

Square Kilometer Array (SKA)

The location of the SKA has been shortlisted to Australia or South Africa with a decision being made in 2012. This array which will create a telescope with a collecting area equivalent to a dish with an area of about one square kilometre and combines three different type of antenna. It will combine high frequency dishes (like the VLA) with low frquency apeture arrays (like LOFAR) to provide continuous frequency coverage from 70 MHz to 10 GHz and will become the world's best imaging and surveying telescope.

 

Having fun after final LOFAR LBA antenna was finished.

I started the talk at Brookfield by explaining why LOFAR is so different to radio antenna most people are aware of (VLA antenna, dishes). I explained how we built the 96 LBA antenna at the new UK site in Chilbolton, and showed them a video of us making the telescope from YouTube where Professor Bob explains how LOFAR works and about the Epoch of Reionisation. After explaining all about this time in the universe, when the first stars and quasars (black holes) were being created I then tried went on to explain about the Neutral Hydrogen 21cm. It is is this wavelength of Hydrogen which we associate with this time in the universe, but the frequency has been redshifted to low frequencies, below 240MHz and can therefore be detected by LOFAR. 

This led me into explaining Doppler shift and showing spectrum where various atomic lines had suffered red or blue shift, I think this part of the talk went over alot of their heads but some of them seemed to understand quite well.

I finished the talk by explaining spin off in Technology from Radio Astronomy. I think it is important to put these in since we need to show how important it is that science and astronomy are not allowed to stop due to government etc cutting the money...I start with the  invention of wi-fi which earned Australian astronomers 200 million AU Dollars (all of which they are ploughing back into the new square kilometer array, SKA telescope) . I also talked about Satallite Navigation systems, a spin off from Cambridge radio astronomers trying to find accurate postions of their movable antenna with respect to their fixed antenna to carry out radio interfermetry.

Questions and Thoughts

 

The majority of questions from the students were about black holes and jets. There were some very good questions about how black holes form in the early universe, as opposed to the normal, end of a star life, and a good question about why a galaxy should rotate in a certain way.

There was only one or two questions about the LOFAR antenna which manily related to the lack of moving parts and why there needed to be so many of them. All questions after talk went off onto a tangent about worm holes, time-travel and E=mc2 and what happens when a black hole comes to the end of it's life....very good questions, shows they were thinking alot during the talk...but maybe not thinking so much about radio astronomy :P... I had a good go at answering all these and explained to them that with regards to jets and exploding black holes, astronomers are still preety clueless, so this is why we need intelligent people like them to become astronomers and help us work it all out . Finally just as I was leaving one boy asked me for advice on buying an optical telescope (which I was unable to help with :P).

Suggestions for Future Talks

Happy overall with science content.

Need more science relating to LOFAR (specifically with the UK antenna that has been added)

Obvious interest in black holes, so tie in black holes to LOFAR.

Better explanation of Doppler and Red Shift.

More stuff on black holes relating to sci-fi stuff, time travel etc.

Intech Astronomy Day

I was at Intech on the exhibition floor from 9am till 5pm. Luckily I had my parents there to help set up the display board and to drive me there, both are practical things that I struggle with.... :P

I had 3 LOFAR stands from QMU and a display board from Southampton University, with one of my own research posters (Research using VLA radio antenna in USA), pictures of the build at Chilbolton, pictures of Dame Jocelyn with a LOFAR low band antenna, the "how mobile phones work" poster made by the University of Southampton , a solar poster in 3D (but did not have 3D glasses unfortuntely). 

On the table we had LOFAR, and Uni of Southampton bookmarks, SEPNET postcards and the laser music kit, an ASTRON news brochure, with the current lofar science in and a BBC stargazing brochure. 

One of the LOFAR posters I placed (by my mother) at the entrance with a notice on it to 'see exhibition floor', this was because the amateurs had alot of activities to do on the astronomy day and might not have seen me on the exhibition floor otherwise. I had an actual LOFAR antenna attached to the table.

At Intech there were many members of the general public  manly families and then many amateur astronomers including some amateur radio astronomers.

I talked to approximately 8 members of the general public, and about 15 of the amateur astronomers.

Most of the amateurs only came to talk to me in the 15min breaks in between the various workshops and planetarium shows that were being put on from 10-4.30pm. Alot of them had heard of LOFAR, i.e. seen it on the news when we built it :)

Members of the public were interested since they were suprised, firstly that there was a radio telescope up the road and how simple the radio dipole antenna was, and i talked to them about black holes and my research with radio astronomy and X-rays, and how LOFAR is important for looking at epoch of reionisation. I talked to the younger children about fibre optics and the internet with the laser-music device and mobile phone poster, and linked that in with lofar since they have to send data in real time at 15gb per sec etc. I also told one boy who was interested in astromony ,specifially black holes, how radio astronomy is a good place for jobs at the moment etc, what with LOFAR and SKA.

Alot of the radio astronomy amateurs wanted to know how easily they could make their own antenna and connect them with other amateurs, I told them that the antennas are the cheap part it is the problem of correlating the signals with each other which is the problem , especially if you want to do it in real time etc. Several of them wanted to actually visit the Chilbolton site, etc, so I gave them Rob Fenders at Uni of Sotons name as a contact.

The gentleman who gave a talk on amateur radio astronomy mentioned how easy it was to make your own and gave a link to an amateur website where you can borrow one of their radio antenna and connect directly to a computer and do your own radio astronomy which was very interesting and seemed quite simple to do, the graphs you get out are quite basic but it shows how much of a challenge radio astronomy is..because  you can see radio signals from the trees, the sun (basically everything) due to electrons being accelerated in everything!!!

But ,he stated that since radio astronomy can be done in daylight , or at night when it's cloudy,  he and the other radio amateurs say this is why they chose radio astronomy since the optical astronomers rarely see anything in the UK, because of our fabulous, very cloudy weather.

Me talking to some amateur astronomers

The Stand, with Antenna on the right.

Suggestions for the Future
____________________________
Get links with the radio amateurs and make own radio telescope, use their ones (Find out where on this site britastro.org/radio you can access the radio antenna that anyone can use.)

More pictures/posters of actual LOFAR research, and why it is different to other radio telescopes, i.e. Epoch of Reionisation stuff and explaining dipoles themselves; how they work, the multi-user and the whole sky view aspect of LOFAR.

More info about the super computer and the pipelines etc used to get images.

Higher resolution images since the UK station has been added etc.


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