Edinburgh astronomers awarded UK Space Agency funding for international mission.
A consortium of UK astronomers, led by Professor Andy Taylor at the School’s Institute for Astronomy, has been awarded £8 million by the UK Space Agency over the next two years to develop and launch an international space mission to study dark energy and dark matter in the Universe.
The Euclid satellite, expected to be launched in 2023, is a European Space Agency (ESA) flagship mission to image and measure the distance to over 1.5 billion galaxies over 15,000 square degrees of the sky, looking back over half the age of the Universe.
The high-quality images will be carefully processed to generate maps of the distribution and evolution of dark matter and galaxies across the Universe. The maps will be analysed to determine the nature of dark energy, the mysterious phenomena which is driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe.
The UK Space Agency funding will support UK astronomers and computing specialists who are developing advanced methods for the Euclid Science Ground Segment data analysis, and the UK’s dedicated Euclid Science Data Centre, hosted at Edinburgh. The UK consortium is a major component of the Euclid Consortium, a wider European-led network of scientists working on the Euclid mission.
Image gallery
The School of Physics & Astronomy will take part in the University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Virtual Open Days.
The School of Physics and Astronomy events will consist of presentations and Q&A sessions on the following days:
- Wednesday 16th November: Introduction to MSc Theoretical Physics and Mathematical Physics 14:00-15:00 UK time
- Wednesday 16th November: Introduction to MSc Particle and Nuclear Physics 16:00-17:00 UK time
- Thursday 17th November: Q&A with MSc students and alumni 14:30-15:30 UK time
To book a place visit the Virtual Postgraduate Open Days 2022 page on the University of Edinburgh website.
Congratulations to Dr Carlo Bruno who has been awarded the Young Investigator prize in Nuclear Physics.
The Young Investigator prize in Nuclear Physics is awarded to recognize and encourage promising experimental or theoretical research in nuclear physics, including the advancement of a method, a procedure, a technique, or a device that contributes in a significant way to nuclear physics research.
Carlo Bruno was awarded this prize for his experimental work with low-energy nuclear reactions relevant for astrophysics and his leading role in transferring these experiments into storage rings using radioactive beams.
Carlo graduated from the Università Statale di Milano in Italy, and came to the School’s Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics for his PhD in Nuclear Astrophysics, which he obtained in 2017. Carlo's research focuses on measuring nuclear reactions of key importance to understand the origin of the elements from the Big Bang to supernovae using heavy ion storage rings at FAIR (Germany). He has played a leading role in creating CARME (CRYRING Array for Reaction Measurements), an extreme vacuum chamber for use in international nuclear and atomic physics experiments.
This prize was established by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), which works to assist in the worldwide development of physics, to foster international cooperation in physics, and to help in the application of physics toward solving problems of concern to humanity.
Congratulations to Dr Ross Galloway on who has been awarded the 2022 Institute of Physics Marie Curie-Sklodowska Medal and Prize in recognition of work in developing, using and communicating research-based approaches to active student learning in physics and other disciplines.
The Institute of Physics Marie Curie-Sklodowska Medal and Prize is awarded to those who have made distinguished contributions to physics education.
Dr Ross Galloway’s achievements cover two areas of higher education: firstly, the use, promotion and evaluation of the flipped classroom approach, in which the transfer of knowledge occurs remotely, usually online, and contact with the teacher involves student-centred activity; secondly the use of PeerWise, a revolutionary approach to teaching in which students generate content themselves, including questions and problems to be solved by other students.
Both these areas of work are pioneering in the UK and have been influential in encouraging take up in many other universities. These approaches have also been expanded to developmental sessions in disciplines beyond physics.
Flipped classroom teaching was introduced in 2011 by Dr Galloway as part of the Edinburgh team. He has carried out many evaluation studies, initially focusing on outcome metrics (e.g. using the Force Concept Inventory to evaluate conceptual understanding). More recent studies have included qualitative aspects of student/instructor behaviour to determine what really works and to disperse the false dichotomy between traditional and active learning, instead focusing on which aspects of student activity result in the most valuable learning.
Dr Galloway was part of the first wave of UK engagement with PeerWise from 2010. The distinctive Edinburgh approach was their extensive use of a research-informed scaffold, to allow students to understand the unfamiliar task of writing problems rather than solving them, to build their confidence and to highlight what is effective assessment. He led the deployment of those scaffolding activities and made many improvements over several years. He also carried out research on how students used PeerWise and determined that, when properly supported, students can generate high-quality questions, indicating deep learning and sophisticated understanding of the physics beyond that typically obtained in more passive approaches.
In addition to physics education research, Dr Galloway provides input to the Institute of Physics Degree Accreditation Committee, and provided a major contribution to the revised accreditation approach which is less content-focused and places more emphasis on degree outcomes relating to students' conceptual understanding of physics, problem solving and broader skills.
Machine learning provides a new way of revealing the physical quantities behind the images observed by telescopes.
Machine learning (ML) is a novel method which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to make predictions with data. Artificial intelligence means using computers to do complex tasks, such as recognizing objects from pictures and playing chess. A lot of applications of ML appeared in many different fields of industry and research in recent years. It not only speeds up the process by efficiently dealing with a great amount of data, but also leads to new methods and new findings.
International collaboration
An international group including experts in astronomy research from the University of Edinburgh, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain), Sapienza University (Italy) and experts in machine learning models from the EURA NOVA company (Belgium), have started a collaboration to provide new and simple ways to infer important physical quantities of clusters of galaxies from multiwavelength images. Recently, they focused on accurate estimates of the mass of galaxy clusters from the Planck satellite microwave images. This study is published in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy.
Measuring galaxy mass
Galaxy clusters are the most massive object that ever formed in our universe, so precisely measuring their masses has very important meanings for many different astronomy studies. In order to obtain its mass from observed images, astronomers have to first process the image by excluding fore/background objects and removing the noises, then different assumptions have to be made to derive the mass from binned image quantities, such as profiles. These assumptions normally oversimplify the state of the real cluster, therefore the mass derived with such methods doesn’t agree with the true mass. This difference is referred to as bias. Furthermore, the whole process is very time-consuming and the clusters have been handled one by one.
Machine learning
The machine learning method proposed by this group overcomes all these problems and can directly get the cluster mass from observed images. And it is very fast - in just a few seconds, over 1000 observed cluster masses are provided. The machine learning model is based on a type of deep learning algorithm known as the Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), which can get the most important features of an image to connect with a defined quantity. A perfect tool for this task. However, this involves training the model with over 10 thousand images from numerical simulations of galaxy clusters, of which the group used the results from The THREEHUNDRED project, hosted in Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). They verified the cluster mass from the machine learning model has no bias and has a very small scatter around the true cluster mass. Applying this model to the images observed by the Planck satellite, they provided bias-free cluster masses of over 1000 galaxy clusters.
PhD student Daniel de Andres from UAM has completed most of the work on this project. The paper’s co-leading author, Dr Weiguang Cui, from the School’s Institute of Astronomy commented:
These results as very exciting, and machine learning is proving to be a useful tool which will help us understand our Universe.
Art work produced following a summer collaboration will be exhibited in an Edinburgh gallery this October.
A collaboration involving art students and physics researchers has led to the creation of a series of art work, sculptures and digital graphics, showcasing a range of physics and astronomy concepts.
The exhibition will take visitors on a visual journey across a range of physics research which takes place within the School of Physics and Astronomy. It includes art work depicting the formation and structure of the universe; the application of physics in the study of microorganism growth; and in the use of supercomputers for computationally intensive tasks such as quantum mechanics. It also features portraits of students and researchers.
Three Edinburgh College of Art students collaborated with 20 researchers during the 10 week summer project, brought together by communications and outreach colleagues.
School of Physics and Astronomy organisers commented:
This is a great opportunity to help convey the work which takes place behind lab doors, to communicate complex ideas, and to share some fascinating concepts in a visual format.
The exhibition, called ‘Fusion: Physics X Art’ takes place at Whitespace Gallery in Newington, Edinburgh from Friday 14 to Tuesday 18 October 2022.
The DART - OPTiK team will observe NASA’s asteroid deflection mission from their base in Kenya.
The DART - OPTiK team, which includes a collaboration of researchers from the University of Edinburgh, Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), Technical University of Kenya and the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI), set up a portable telescope at the TBI base in Ileret, Kenya and have been taking observations over the past month.
Tonight, they will observe NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) as the spacecraft launched in November 2021 deliberately collides with its target asteroid. The moment of impact will only be visible from countries around the Indian Ocean, with the dark skies of Ileret making it an excellent vantage point from which to observe this unique event.
DART Mission
The purpose of NASA’s first ever planetary defence test is to demonstrate that the path of an asteroid through space can be changed using a ‘kinetic impactor’: a spacecraft that is deliberately crashed into the asteroid at high speed.
Although the target asteroid is not a danger to Earth, it is expected that the technology being tested can be used, should an asteroid on an Earth-impacting trajectory ever be discovered.
The test will be carried out on a binary asteroid system, which includes a large asteroid (Didymos, 780m diameter) and a smaller moon (Dimorphos, 163m) orbiting it. The DART spacecraft will hit Dimorphos at 14,000 mph, slightly changing its orbit around Didymos. The impact time will be 00:14 BST on Tuesday 27 September, with live images from the spacecraft broadcast online by NASA.
Next steps
The DART- OPTiK team, as well as astronomer teams across the globe, will monitor the orbit of the moon to measure how effective the 'kinetic impactor' experiment was. The team will observe the aftermath of the collision over the coming weeks by monitoring the asteroid’s moon using its lightcurve, and obtain more detailed follow up data using larger telescopes at established observatories in Chile, as part of an international effort.
A related European Space Agency (ESA) mission, Hera, will launch in the coming years to the same asteroid to study the effects of the collision in detail.
Kenyan collaboration
The DART - OPTiK telescope will also be used to do astronomical tests to discern whether the site at Ileret is suitable for a more permanent observatory in the future. Working with the Technical University of Kenya, the Kenyan Space Agency, and the Kenya Optical Telescope Initiative, the team hope to strengthen capacity for local astronomy and facilitate new research in the region.
The UK’s first Hyperloop test track has been built by students from the University’s HYPED team, at the King’s Buildings.
Hyperloop technology
Touted as a future fifth mode of transport, Hyperloop technology would see pods carry people and cargo at high speeds through steel tubes between terminals. Hyperloop is designed to use less energy: the pods are magnetically levitated just above the track, thereby reducing the slowing effects of drag. It is also envisaged that pods would travel through near-vacuum tubes where most of the air has been removed to reduce aerodynamic resistance and energy use.
Popularised by entrepreneur Elon Musk, Hyperloop’s advocates believe it could be a more sustainable alternative to short and medium haul air travel – potentially achieving a London to Edinburgh commute in 50 minutes.
Edinburgh’s HYPED team, which includes students from the School of Physics and Astronomy, is dedicated to advancing Hyperloop, and is the leading university team developing the technology in the UK. It provides a testing ground for engineering students to tackle the technical challenges of building a functioning Hyperloop pod from scratch.
Test track
The new test track is a key missing piece of the jigsaw for HYPED. Each year the team competes in international competitions alongside other top university teams from around the world – which often requires them to test their pod on the track on competition day itself, without having the chance to properly trial it beforehand.
The track is a 100-metre-long aluminium rail, travelling in a straight and smooth line over a concrete foundation, designed by HYPED’s student engineers and located on Max Born Crescent, between Murchison House and FloWave.
The rail was manufactured with support from the University of Edinburgh’s Estates Department, the College of Science and Engineering, and the schools of Engineering, Physics and Astronomy and Informatics.
Prototype pods, which range from three to five metres in length, will potentially reach up to 90 mph over the track, once testing begins in November. Installed just a short walk from the HYPED lab in Hudson Beare building, the track will provide the team with an accessible way to test and validate their design ideas and prototypes for the first time.
Activities and outreach
After constructing their first pod prototype in 2017, HYPED has grown into a thriving and diverse society of around 130 students from across the University. Before the pandemic, they were the only UK-based team to qualify for the annual SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition in California for several years running until the competition ceased in 2019.
In more recent years, they co-founded European Hyperloop Week alongside other top European university teams Delft Hyperloop, Swissloop and Hyperloop UPV – as an annual gathering to bring those working on the technology together, to compete, network, and share ideas.
The team also runs outreach events to inspire school children and the members of the public about Hyperloop technology, and STEM subjects more widely. This includes an upcoming ‘Gender Minorities in STEM Workshop’ for students in Scottish secondary schools in November, where they hope to showcase the track.
HYPED President, School of Engineering student Gregory Dayao explained:
We will use the track as a space to validate our technical designs and demonstrate our vision of Hyperloop to the Edinburgh community. By engaging with the local community, we want to increase awareness of Hyperloop technology and inspire young students to pursue early careers in STEM. The test track is a leap forward for the society to ensure HYPED provides an innovation-centred ecosystem for University of Edinburgh students to develop and generate value towards Hyperloop development.
Come along to our Open Days to find out more about studying at the University of Edinburgh and the School of Physics & Astronomy
Our Open Days will take place on Saturday 8th October and 5th November 2022. The School of Physics & Astronomy is located in the James Clerk Maxwell Building, in the King’s Building’s Campus. At the School of Physics & Astronomy you will get the chance to find out more about our Undergraduate degree programmes, meet academics and students, and tour our physics labs.
Please check the University of Edinburgh Open Day pages to find out more and book your place.
Astronomers have taken the first image of an exoplanet – a planet beyond our solar system – with the James Webb Space Telescope.
This is the first image of an exoplanet with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as well as the first image of an exoplanet at wavelengths longer than 5 microns.
An exoplanet is a planet beyond our solar system. Learning about exoplanets teaches us new information about how the universe works.
This image is of exoplanet HIP 65426b. It is a young, giant planet. As a young planet, it is still very hot, and hence can be detected by its glow in the infrared.
The image captured shows the exoplanet as seen in different bands of infrared light: purple shows the NIRCam (near infrared camera) instrument’s view at 3 micrometers, blue shows the NIRCam instrument’s view at 4.44 micrometers, yellow shows the MIRI (mid infrared instrument) view at 11.40 micrometers, and red shows the MIRI instrument’s view at 15.50 micrometers. These images look different because of the ways that the different filters capture light. The small white star in each image marks the location of the host star, HIP 65426. The JWST team used instruments known as coronagraphs to block out the light of the host star to reveal the planet.
Prof Beth Biller, based at the School’s Institute for Astronomy, is the co-principal investigator of a James Webb Space Telescope Early Release Science Programme:
This is the first of hopefully many exoplanet images from the JWST. With JWST's unprecedented sensitivity, we can detect and characterise both young giant planets like HIP 65426b, but also potentially young analogues to Saturn and Neptune as well!
Dr Trent Dupuy and PhD student Pengyu Liu from the School were also involved in the JWST Early Release Science Programme as part of a large international collaboration involving 100+ scientists.
