Book of Abstracts 2009 European Week of Astronomy and Space Science

340 Pages·2009·3 MB·English

stvwwxyzv{zxt|z{}{}~
st{~(cid:127)tv{zxtv(cid:128)(cid:129)~v(cid:127)x(cid:130)
(cid:131)w{(cid:127)xtx(cid:132)(cid:133)(cid:134)(cid:135)(cid:135)(cid:136)
#$%&’()* , ((- &./01%&*&2 3
)*4 5’)6( 567(*6(
89:8; =>?@A899B
C*7D(%0713&.E(%1.&%40F7%(GCH
I*6&%’&%)17*J K/5 L/M NOOP
)*4 #/5 Q#L/M NOOP
RRRSTUVWX 899BSUY
Z[U>?\]?WX X U@V^AY_U‘ab c\AW?d[e‘@^‘WV_ f gcZ X UUh@V]‘ijc= WV_ jck
>AUVW?@U‘iX YAh@>AU>W?WAAUA‘^@UV^U‘U‘‘@\V‘WV_ ‘eX >\‘@W\V
l Z[UVUmhU?W@V?W_@\ W‘h?\V\X enh[U>Wh[RWeh\ cb=
l Z[U‘hWV_W?_ ^\‘X \A\]@^WAX \_UA‘:‘Y^^U‘‘U‘WV_ ^[WAAUV]U‘
l aV_U?‘hWV_@V] ‘Yo‘hUAAW?>\>YAWh@\V‘WV_ WhX \‘>[U?U‘np?\X o?\RV
_RW?p‘h\ Um\:>AWVUh‘
l Z[UA@pU^e^AU\p_Y‘h
l f YAh@:RWqUAUV]h[[@][?U_‘[@ph‘Y?qUe‘
l Z[?UU_U^W_U‘\p]?Wq@hWh@\VWAAUV‘U‘
l Z[Ugr= 899B@VjY?\>U
(cid:0)(cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:4)(cid:6)(cid:3)(cid:7)(cid:8)(cid:6)(cid:0)(cid:9)(cid:10)(cid:11)(cid:8)(cid:12)(cid:13)(cid:14)(cid:15)(cid:16)(cid:17)(cid:18)(cid:19)(cid:20)(cid:15)(cid:21)(cid:22)(cid:17)(cid:23)(cid:0)(cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:4)(cid:6)(cid:3)(cid:7)(cid:8)(cid:24)(cid:25)(cid:17)(cid:20)(cid:17)(cid:26)(cid:27)(cid:13)(cid:20)(cid:20)(cid:25)(cid:15)(cid:28)(cid:29)(cid:11)(cid:3)(cid:30)(cid:30)(cid:17)(cid:31) (cid:13)(cid:31)!"(cid:17)

Book of Abstracts – Table of Contents

Welcome to the European Week of Astronomy & Space Science ...................................................... iii
How space, and a few stars, came to Hatfield ............................................................................... v

Plenary I: UK Solar Physics (UKSP) and Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar Terrestrial (MIST) ....... 1
Plenary II: European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) ....... 2
Plenary III: European Space Agency (ESA) .................................................................................. 3
Plenary IV: Square Kilometre Array (SKA), High-Energy Astrophysics, Asteroseismology ................... 4

Symposia

(1) The next era in radio astronomy: the pathway to SKA .............................................................. 5
(2) The standard cosmological models - successes and challenges .................................................. 17
(3) Understanding substellar populations and atmospheres: from brown dwarfs to exo-planets .......... 28
(4) The life cycle of dust ............................................................................................................ 46
(5) Multi-wavelength high redshift surveys .................................................................................. 63
(6) Three decades of gravitational lenses ..................................................................................... 82
(7) The IYA 2009 in Europe ........................................................................................................ 94

Sessions

(A1) MIST Planetary Session ...................................................................................................... 107
(A2) MIST Particle Acceleration / MIST General Session ................................................................. 110
(A3) MIST General Session ........................................................................................................ 112
(A4) MIST Heliospheric and Astrospheric Structure and Planetary Interactions ................................. 115
(A5) MIST Posters ..................................................................................................................... 117
(AB1) MIST/UKSP Magnetic Reconnection .................................................................................... 126
(AB2) MIST/UKSP The Unusual (?) Solar Minimum ........................................................................ 129
(AB3) MIST/UKSP From the Sun to the Earth ............................................................................... 132
(B1) UKSP Structure and Activity in the Solar Atmosphere ............................................................. 134
(B2) UKSP Solar/Stellar Interiors ................................................................................................ 136
(B3) UKSP The Sun as a Star ..................................................................................................... 138
(B4) UKSP Particle Acceleration .................................................................................................. 139
(B5) UKSP Dynamics of Solar Magnetic Fields ............................................................................... 141
(B6) UKSP Posters .................................................................................................................... 143
(BA1) UKSP/MIST Particle Acceleration ......................................................................................... 157
(BA2) UKSP/MIST Solar/STP Missions Forum ................................................................................ 159
(C) MHD seismology of solar, space and astrophysical plasmas (Joint with MIST and UKSP) ............... 162
(D) Mercury - recent insights and future goals .............................................................................. 177
(E) In-Situ and remote characterisation of minor bodies ................................................................ 179
(F) Binary stars: observation and theory ...................................................................................... 186
(G) Asteroseismology in the era of the CoRoT and Kepler missions ................................................. 197
(H) Formation of Stars and Brown Dwarfs .................................................................................... 199
(I) The Galaxy and its Satellites .................................................................................................. 217
(J) Explosive transients in distant galaxies ................................................................................... 227
(K) High energy astrophysics ..................................................................................................... 236
(L) The local volume: constraints on galaxy formation and evolution ............................................... 243
(M) Galaxy clusters and their evolution ........................................................................................ 257
(N) Epoch of reionization ........................................................................................................... 268
(O) Outflows, Feedback and the Central Engines of AGN ................................................................ 273
(P) Towards the first detection of gravitational waves .................................................................... 283
(Q) X-ray astronomy in the next decade ...................................................................................... 288
(R) Enabling technologies for space-based astronomy and space science ......................................... 294
(S) Europe's medium telescopes: status and prospects .................................................................. 297
(T) The Virtual Observatory and Distributed Computing ................................................................. 302
(U) Application of machine learning techniques to astronomical data analysis ................................... 308
(V) Pro-Am session ................................................................................................................... 311
(W1) ALMA: status, science capabilities and the path towards science operations ............................. 315
(W2) E-ELT: the European Extremely Large Telescope ................................................................... 316
(W3) How to use ESO - The life-cycle of an ESO observing program ................................................. 317
(X) Plans and Opportunities for European Astronomy .................................................................... 319
(Y) Upcoming ESA astrophysics missions ..................................................................................... 321

First Author Index ...................................................................................................................... 324

i
ii
Welcome to the European Week of Astronomy & Space Science

I am pleased to welcome you to our de Havilland Campus. The University of
Hertfordshire is delighted to be hosting the European Week of Astronomy &
Space Science Meeting, incorporating the Royal Astronomical Society’s National
Astronomy Meeting and the European Astronomical Society’s Joint European and
National Astronomy Meeting. It is fifteen years since this Europe-wide meeting
was last held in the UK and it is an honour to host this meeting during the
International Year of Astronomy. We are pleased that the event has attracted
over 1000 delegates.

Astronomers are very fortunate to be carrying out research that not only
motivates them but captures the imagination of the public. Importantly,
astronomy draws many young people into science. The four Public Lectures and a Schools Day with over
500 children attending, clearly demonstrates the widespread interest in astronomy and the commitment of
astronomers to reach out to the community.

I know that there will be many new and exciting discoveries presented, and I wish you all a very successful
meeting.

Professor Tim Wilson
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire

On behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society I welcome colleagues from
astronomy, space science and planetary science throughout Europe to this
special meeting incorporating the NAM and JENAM. The NAM has become a
major event in the calendar of UK astronomy; this year it will reflect our
important links through ESA and ESO with colleagues on the continent. A
measure of its enhanced status is that our meeting, for the first time, will be
opened by a government minister. If the present recession has taught us
anything, it is that we need to base our economies on scientific knowledge.

Our subjects, in asking fundamental questions about the universe, not only have
helped revolutionise the technologies on which modern societies depend, they
excite the public imagination and encourage young people to equip themselves
for careers in 'knowledge based' economies. I am sure we will have a memorable
meeting!

Professor Andy Fabian
President, Royal Astronomical Society

It is a pleasure and honour for me to welcome you in the name of the European
Astronomical Society to JENAM2009: "The European Week of Astronomy and
Space Science”. EAS is delighted to hold this meeting together with the Royal
Astronomical Society, the oldest such society in the world.

As the title "The European Week of Astronomy and Space Science” already tells
you, the meeting will present a broad overview of European activities on all levels
and across wavelength bands from the highest energy regimes via optical and
infrared to radio astronomy; from subjects such as our planetary system via stars
and galaxies to the ultimate questions posed by cosmology.

I am particularly excited about the great response, with more than 1000
colleagues already registered. We have an exciting conference ahead of us and I
very much hope that this meeting will serve to offer the opportunity to meet,
discuss scientific problems, to make new contacts and refresh old ones. I should
like to thank all British colleagues for the preparation of this meeting and thank the institutions and
sponsors that supported this event. I wish you a scientifically successful meeting, and many stimulating
conversations with your colleagues.

Professor Joachim Krautter
President, European Astronomical Society
iii
iv
How space, and a few stars, came to Hatfield

In November each year, graduands of the University of the Hertfordshire gather in the Cathedral and
Abbey Church of St Alban to take their degrees. For physics and astronomy students, this is a particularly
apt setting: seven hundred years ago the abbot of the Great Abbey was one of England’s most remarkable
medieval scientists – Richard of Wallingford. Richard was a Benedictine monk with a fascination for
mechanical devices that could be used to calculate and represent celestial motions. Educated at Oxford, he
had written the Quadripartitum, a major treatise on spherical geometry, and invented the Albion, a
medieval astronomical supercomputer. The ingenious and intricate geometrical construction of the Albion
facilitated the determination of parallax, planetary motions, conjunctions and eclipses, alongside the
normal functions of an astrolabe and quadrant. Richard also designed one of Europe’s earliest (and
certainly most elaborate) mechanical clocks with its own suite of astronomical functions including gearings
for solar and lunar motions and the variation in the tides. The clock was to be fabricated in iron and
installed in the Abbey on the wall of the southern transept. Construction began whilst Richard was Abbot
and Edward II is reported to have been shocked that making it was given precedence over the restoration
of the fabric of the Abbey: Richard rejoined that whilst those that succeeded him would doubtless be
capable of organising repairs, he alone knew how to design and make the clock – his father had been a
blacksmith. It is unsurprising then that when Richard died of leprosy, work on the clock was suspended
although reports suggest it was eventually finished in 1390, over fifty years after Richard’s death. The
original clock sadly no longer exists although a reconstruction can be found in Illinois.

Our story continues with another clock. It belonged to the Walker family who lived in Highgate in Victorian
England. Unbeknown to the family, their son Charles, usually referred to simply as ‘C.C.’, had liberated the
mechanism from the clock and adapted it to drive his small telescope – the removal was only revealed
when the clock was sent to a jumble sale and the empty shell returned by its irate purchaser! He took
some rather impressive full-frame images of the Moon, which were generously donated to the Centre for
Astrophysics Research a few years ago. It says something for the speed of film emulsions in the late
nineteenth century that a drive was required and the exposures were typically about a thousand times
what might be required today. As a young man, C.C. became interested in
aviation and wrote to Geoffrey de Havilland (right) asking if he might work
for him, without salary at first, at least until he had proved his usefulness. De
Havilland had built his own plane from scratch sponsored by his grandfather
and designed a modified motorcycle engine to power it. These were the
pioneering days of powered flight and, on its first successful flight, a
colleague was required to lie on the ground as the plane attempted to gather
lift to confirm it had indeed become airborne. Although he didn’t start his
own business immediately, this was the seed of the de Havilland Aircraft
Company. C.C. must have impressed Geoffrey de Havilland because he was a
founding director of the de Havilland Aircraft Company which moved its base
to Hatfield in the early nineteen thirties. The fact that the company could
expand in a time of depression was a testament to the enduring popularity of
one of its best known designs – the DH Moth.

Around Hatfield, road and building names recall the golden age of aviation and allow us to forget for a
moment the indignity of a vestigial hanger that currently houses a fitness centre. Outside the Comet Hotel,
a short walk from the de Havilland campus, is a model of the DH aircraft, the twin-piston engine Comet
Racer named ‘Grosvenor House’, which won the MacRobertson Trophy in 1934 – a speed race from London
to Melbourne. It has the beautiful lines that characterize so many de Havilland aircraft. Indeed, these
reflect the recurrent design philosophy of C.C. Walker that there was a potential economy in speed, and
hence a value in what he rather nicely called ‘aerodynamic purity’. Next time you have a seemingly
impossible deadline to meet, you might like to reflect that ten months before the race took place, not even
a plan existed of this remarkable aeroplane. In the event, it had a range of nearly five thousand kilometres
at an average speed of 350 km/hr; it took 71 hours to make the trip, about three times the transit time of
v
a jumbo jet. The wooden construction of the DH88 Racer was mirrored in the wartime development of the
Mosquito, an equally remarkable aircraft that also lends its name to the collection of de Havilland
memorabilia displayed in a nearby museum in London Colney, just outside St Albans.

Before moving into the jet age, a quick diversion is in order to gather evidence for Hatfield’s strategic
importance at the time. Eddie Chapman, a small-time crook who would be played by a louche Christopher
Plummer in a film of his life, offered to blow up Hatfield airfield to prove his credibility as a spy. The fact
the film is called Triple Cross will tell you that the airfield was never in serious danger. However Jasper
Maskelyne, a London magician (who also invented the coin-operated toilet door) was called in to fake the
aftermath of an explosion that might at least deceive aerial photography and enable Chapman to continue
his double (or triple) bluff. The name might sound familiar – Jasper was a descendant of Neville Maskelyne,
the fifth Astronomer Royal. In 1774, Neville Maskelyne undertook a determination of the mass and hence
density of the Earth based on observing the deflection of a plumb bob by a large mountain, Schiehallion, in
Scotland - he was apparently within 20% of the right answer.

Actually, the airfield would be blown up half a century later, with somewhat more advanced film trickery.
Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks came to Hatfield to shoot sequences of first Saving Private Ryan and
later Band of Brothers. Production designers apparently cleaned out clothing stock from the town’s charity
shops and aeroplanes and smoke filled the sky during an unusually noisy summer vacation. University
students worked on some of the models for these productions, as they have on many others in the thriving
local film industry. The replica of Galileo’s telescope that you will see on stage during the conference was
made by an undergraduate, Tina Jane Moore, as part of her final year project on the Model Design
programme.

Anyway, we move on from Agent Zig-Zag, as Chapman was known, to Spider Crab. Thankfully not a
genetically modified superhero from a comic book too far, Spider Crab was the code name for another
aircraft, the Vampire – although it’s not altogether clear why something called a Vampire needed a code
name. Powered by de Havilland’s Goblin engine, it was the first jet to operate from an aircraft carrier. In
the late nineteen forties, the great challenge to aeronautical design was breaking the sound barrier and the
de Havilland DH108 became the first British jet aircraft to achieve Mach 1, albeit in a partially controlled
dive. Just to show this speed lust has not deserted Hatfield, some University aerospace students have
recently designed and built an impressive rocket sled for impact testing that also comfortably breaks the
sound barrier on an eighty metre horizontal wire.

The quest for speed brings us to the Comet airliner built in Hatfield in 1949. The tragic early history of this
aircraft should not overshadow the wonderful accomplishment of de Havilland in developing and building
the world’s first jet airliner - and thus making international observational astronomy possible! The metal
fatigue problems that beset the first model not only allowed American competitors to catch up, but meant
pioneering studies, from which all airlines ultimately benefited, were costly in every sense to the company.

Space entered the picture in the fifties with the development of missiles designed as part of the national
nuclear deterrent. The test facilities became a distinctive local landmark as no effort was made to disguise
the site which was clearly visible (and audible) from Manor Road. Fortunately, the Blue Streak missile
discovered a happier role as the lowest stage in the European Space Launcher Programme, Europa, where
it proved extremely reliable and, with its twin RZ.2 Rolls Royce engines, immensely powerful.

The University is a natural descendant of the de Havilland Aeronautical Technical College where the
trademark first assignment for new trainees was to make their own tool box. Some of the early courses in
the Technical College (and later Polytechnic) were designed for satellite groups working for the firm. In
vi
1960, de Havilland was bought by Hawker Siddeley in a major restructuring of the British aircraft industry,
and this in turn became part of nationalised British Aerospace in 1977. Although this closed in 1992, there
is still local expertise e.g. in mathematics, where one of Hatfield’s specialisms in the nineteen sixties was
the optimisation of spacecraft trajectories. There are also close links, including a European postdoctoral
training network, with EADS Astrium, based in nearby Stevenage and one of the generous sponsors of this
meeting. A prototype Mars rover designed there will be stationed close to the conference on the closest
surface we could find to a Martian dune which, rather fittingly, comes from Sandy!

Astronomy as a subject in its own right at the University was established by J.C.D. (Lou) Marsh. He was
working as a lecturer in electrical engineering and decided to put up a trial course of lectures on general
astronomy. When this met with an enthusiastic response, he suggested in 1967 that it be offered as a
regular subject and an observatory be built to support the course. With backing from the Polytechnic
Director Sir Norman Lindop and others in the senior management of the University, it was possible to offer
the first courses in 1969.

The University Observatory is located at Bayfordbury, in a country estate about half an hour’s drive from
the main campus offering some respite from insidious town lighting. The Observatory was opened by Alan
Hunter, then Deputy Head of the Royal Greenwich Observatory – the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) was
only a few years old then and working from the Sussex countryside. Bayfordbury is one of the UK’s finest
teaching observatories hosting eight domed telescopes with apertures up to 0.5 m. There are dedicated
domes for spectroscopy and video astronomy and a 4.5 m radio dish. This will be supplemented shortly
with two further receivers to add interferometry to the site’s capabilities. An historically important
observation of an occultation by Titan, in early efforts to study the thickness of its atmosphere, was made
by Bob Forrest, who has managed the technical running of the Observatory for a quarter of a century.
Chris Kitchin succeeded Lou Marsh as Director of the Observatory; you may know him best as the author
of Astrophysical Techniques (now in its 4th edition). Chris and Iain Nicholson, another celebrated
astronomical writer, developed astronomy as a major degree programme within the University. One of the
highlights of recent times was the observation of a gamma ray burst optical afterglow – the first by a UK
university observatory. A long-time friend of the Observatory, Sir Patrick Moore was surrounded by old and
new friends when he opened the award-winning control building named in his honour in 2000.

Hatfield’s early research reputation rests on the detection and modelling of polarised radiation in active
galactic nuclei, star forming regions and planetary nebulae. Polarimeters were designed and constructed
in-house, a programme initiated and driven by a then University physics lecturer, Jim Hough, who is now
Director of Astronomy Research (in the now much expanded research centre) nearly forty years later. The
first polarimeter was built here in the early nineteen seventies. It was a stand-alone instrument operating
in the near-infrared that employed first a PbS and then an InSb detector. This was followed by a series of
Hatfield polarimeters working in the optical and infrared, used on the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in
Hawaii and the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) in New South Wales. In the early nineties, the emphasis
switched to the construction of polarimeters as additional facilities for observatory imagers and
spectrometers including dual-beam polarimetry systems at the AAT and UKIRT and the polarimetry optics
for the Japanese instruments, TRISPEC and SIRIUS. Latest in the line is PlanetPol, with polarization
sensitivities of better than one part in a million. It was designed to find extrasolar planets by detecting the
polarized signal of reflected light from a distant planetary atmosphere. One of the most provocative
discoveries of the group was the serendipitous discovery of high degrees of circular polarization in the
Orion star forming complex and the speculation that this could be linked to the molecular homochirality
essential for life.

Nowadays the research interests of the Centre for Astrophysics Research also embrace high and low
frequency radio, x-ray and gamma ray astronomy. The Centre currently has about sixty researchers
working in wide-ranging galactic and extragalactic programmes. Astronomer and musician Brian May has
vii
endowed a studentship awarded each year to a student of outstanding promise studying toward a Research
Masters degree within the Centre.

Any gazetteer for visitors to Hatfield would be incomplete without a mention of Hatfield House, the
ancestral home of the Cecil family. If you arrived by train, you can’t fail to have noticed the large bronze
of Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury and three times Prime Minister, atop
the plinth outside the Main Gates. But rather than enter by these gates, we’ll take a detour climbing the hill
through Old Hatfield and so enter the House close to its Elizabethan dining hall. This small diversion means
we can pop into The Eight Bells, an inn - amongst many others admittedly - where Dickens stayed; he
used it as a setting for Bill Sykes’ refuge in Oliver Twist. Hatfield’s inns were also scoured by Colonel
Forster in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: he was searching for Lydia Bennett after her elopement with
Wickham, but the reckless couple weren’t to be found here.

Elizabeth I learnt of her accession to the throne in the grounds of Hatfield House in 1558 when she was
twenty five. There is a striking Rainbow Portrait of the Queen in the House painted by Isaac Oliver around
1600. The first details that strike most people are eerie eyes and ears that cover the Queen’s cloak. But
there are subtle reminders of Richard of Wallingford’s Albion here too. In a painting laced with symbolism,
there is a tiny celestial sphere on her right arm and a crescent jewel to represent the lunar goddess
Cynthia in her headdress. Elizabeth herself is the Sun described in the painting’s motto – non sine sole iris
(no rainbow without the Sun). She holds the rainbow in her right hand like a steering wheel as a symbol of
peace in her realm. This is a nice cue to mention that one of the major research interests of the University
is in light scattering. Analogue ice crystals have been constructed to produce light haloes in the laboratory
and there is a new dedicated facility for the study of scattering by biological particles. This work and that of
the quantum optics group rest daily on the observation that Thomas Young made on the interference of
light waves – one of the most influential experiments in the history of physics. And so to one final tie with
the past: in 1790, as a young man of seventeen, the polymath Young read and was inspired by Newton’s
Opticks in Youngsbury, a country house near Ware, just a few miles to the east of the University
Observatory.

JLC - April 2009
Bibliography
A distillation of a vast amount of his personal research on Richard of Wallingford’s life and science is
contained in John North’s God’s Clockmaker – Richard Wallingford and the Invention of Time (Hambledon
Continuum 2005). Contemporary reaction to Richard’s clock can be found in G.H. Baillie’s Watches – Their
History, Decoration and Mechanism (reprinted by N.A.G. in 1979). Details of C.C. Walker’s life were kindly
passed on to me by Betty Ewens B.E.M. who worked for de Havilland and also organised the donation of
Walker’s surviving photographs from the estate of Mrs Riks. There is a nice centenary appreciation of ‘C.C.’
written by D.R. Newman and published in The Aeronautical Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society in
October 1978. The early trials and excitement of experimental powered flight are captured in Sir Geoffrey
de Havilland’s autobiography Sky Fever (reprinted by the Crowood Press Limited in 1999). A
comprehensive history of DH aircraft is A History of de Havilland by C. Sharp and D.H. Martin (Airlife
1982). P.J. Birtles has also published much about de Havilland and the Mosquito in particular, but
Planemakers – de Havilland (Jane’s 1984) is a good general reference. Eddie Chapman’s story has been
told in more than one film but the biography by Ben Macintyre (Agent ZigZag, Bloomsbury Publishing
2007) gives far more background to Chapman’s extraordinary life. A comprehensive and accessible review
of what can be achieved with polarimetry is Jim Hough’s "New opportunities for astronomical polarimetry"
(Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer 106 (2007) 122). Further details of the Rainbow
Portrait and indeed other art treasures in Hatfield House are contained in Auerbach and Adams’ Painting
and Sculpture at Hatfield House (Constable & Co. Limited 1971). I learnt about the Youngsbury connection
from a recent biography of Thomas Young by Andrew Robinson, ‘The Last Man Who Knew Everything’
(Oneworld 2007).
viii