Light Work

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light...

2011-09-23T13:59:00.005Z

It's business as usual here in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton and no one seems really excited about the possibility of the discovery of particles traveling faster than the speed of light at CERN, as has been suggested in the news.

'It's most probably systematic error', said Dr Matthew Himsworth to me today. 'We're not going to be changing the laws of science because of the results of one experiment. Matthew's job involves slowing particles down by bombarding them with laser light in the Quantum Control Group.

Professor Peter de Groot - Head of the department and Chair of the IOP's Magnetism Group - suggested that often such discoveries are discredited within a month or so and are usually the result of experimental errors, but he said 'we're not familiar with the experiment, so we wouldn't want to judge'.

So no-one's re-writing the text books just yet, as we get ready for the new influx of students for the start of the term.

Work Experience and Liquid Crystals

2011-09-16T15:57:00.012Z

Here's another guest blog from our work experience students. 15 and 16 year-old , Simrit Gill and Rahul Shiveram from Thornden School visited us in October. They got up to a number of activities, but two experiences really impressed them; Sadie Jones took them for a journey across the Galaxy in the Astrodome, and PhD student Mark Herrington showed them his Photonics lab: - this is what they reported ...

“Work experience” often has some mixed connotations; people may find themselves doing anything - perhaps stacking dusty shelves in an insignificant corner of a local grocery store, however, we found ourselves at the University of Southampton.

One might wonder what two GCSE students could do at a prestigious University, however it soon became apparent that there was actually quite a lot we could get up to. We encountered many interesting and mind-blowing research areas in Physics and Astronomy and visited many labs. These experiences included being immersed a film in the Astrodome, exploring labs where researchers are trying to find new and efficient ways to run the internet and a lab where their mission is to find a way to make lasers more powerful.

Our science classes have always taught us that there are 3 states of matter: Solids, Liquids and Gases. However, it's not quite that simple - according to the liquid crystal lab at The University of Southampton there are about five times that number! [Although there are 10 or 15 different liquid crystal phases we would call each of these a different mesophase and in terms of states of matter say that there are 5- Solid, liquid crystal, liquid, gas and plasma. According to Mark shown below - Ed.]

Liquid Crystals are an odd phenomena that most people associate with their flat screen TVs at home, unsurprisingly, they have many more uses. In the lab we were shown around, they were being used as a kind of ‘valve’ which could control the flow of light by electrifying a plate filled with a well known liquid crystal dubbed as ‘E7’. The way the ‘valve’ works is, well, complicated…but here goes.

The system starts off with unpolarised light which is made up of light travelling in all sorts of orientations. The laser is shone through a polariser, (similar to the 3D glasses used in the cinema), which filters out one orientation of light. The beam then travels through a liquid crystal which has its molecules lined up in the same orientation as the polariser. So, as you can imagine, the light travels straight through with ease. However, if you wish to shut the valve ‘off’ which involves running an electric current through the liquid crystal, which switches the orientation of the molecules by 90 degrees. Then it works like a venetian blinds and blocks off the light.

You must be wondering why blocking light out electrically could be useful, surely you could use a piece of black card? In fact, this mechanism would be extremely useful when switching something on and off rapidly for use in an optical computer (a computer using light signals instead of electrical signals as the method of transmitting information). We got to watch/partake in was the fabrication of the liquid crystal cell itself.

Work Experience and Photonics - Working with Gold!

2011-09-13T14:57:00.026Z

A Level Student - Amy Francis - has been working at Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton for the last two weeks. Here is her guest blog...

Day 1: I worked with Paul [Venn, post graduate student ed.] on his Quantum Physics Phd project which ultimately aims to find the boundary between classic laws of physics and quantum mechanics. I was investigating the transmission of a He-Ne laser [beam] through [different sized] apertures. I worked in the molecule interferometry laboratory, aligning the lenses, irises, beam splitters and telescope between the laser source and the detectors so the He-Ne beam was focussed onto a hole in the gold sample and onto the detectors. This had to be done very precisely and to a high degree of accuracy and gave me the opportunity to use equipment I had not used before. It was really interesting to work with lasers and learn about an area of physics that I have not had the opportunity to study before.

Day 2: I took measurements of the holes and collected data from the transmission of the light through the apertures from the experiment I set up the day before. It was great to gain a better understanding of how the experiment worked. I then analysed the data using a computer program 'Origin' that I had not used before. It was interesting to see how it worked and use the program to analyse my results. I produced graphs to display the data and show the location and size of the holes in the gold film.

The photo above shows the set up of lenses, beam splitters, detectors, irises, a telescope and a He-Ne laser to investigate the transmission of a He-Ne laser through apertures in a gold film.

Day 3: I realigned the lenses and detectors for the new sample and took note of the circular interference pattern that was produced. I took a video to show how the pattern changed with the focus. I then took measurements from the new sample and collected data about the properties of the holes - their location and their size. It was a great opportunity to use the equiptment again and learn more about the computer program I was using to collect the data.

Day 4: I took more measurements of the holes in the sample and produced graphs to show the holes using the computer program 'Origin'. I also began to plot the locations of the holes in the sample. This was more challenging than the first sample as the holes were much smaller and so the detectors were set to be more sensitive to ensure they recorded the smaller changes in voltage that were due to the hole being present.

Day 5: I finished plotting the locations of the holes in the sample and produced graphs to show where the holes were in the sample and how large they were. I then tried to trap polystyrene balls in the smaller holes by showering the gold with a solution containing the balls. However, as the solution was showered over the front of the gold it blocked the laser beam through the hole and so the balls were unable to be trapped because the transmission was too low. For the balls to be trapped the light must be shining through the hole so the balls gravitate to where there is the highest light intensity, in the hole. To solve this the gold needs to be flipped over to the other side of the slide and the balls showered onto the back of the slide so that the solution does not decrease the transmission of the He-Ne laser beam.

I also spent some time in the astromomy department looking at the projects there and finding out about the undergraduate physics with astromomy course and the study abroad opportunities.

Overall I have had a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting week. It has been great to work with new equipment and do experiments that I would otherwise not have had the opportunity to do. It has also been really useful to find out more about the university and what it is like to study here.

Science Communication - illustrating data

2011-06-15T13:24:00.003Z

I'm 'embedded' in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton. I have asked members of staff from all three research groups - Quantum Light and Matter, Theory and Astronomy if I can have some data to animate which will be useful to them to use in conference posters which I don't believe has been done before. I'm hoping to get hold of some black hole data and images from LOFAR if possible to animate.

Professor Pavlos Lagoudakis has given me some data from the crossover of condensed Photons and Polaritons in microcavities to illustrate.

Images to follow...

Light Express Crew

2010-07-14T14:53:00.003Z

Sam Berry and Mohammad Belal have been running the Light Express Roadshow this week. They performed the Light Fantastic show - which demonstrates the Photonics - or Laser Technology - behind the internet, and particle physics to students visiting the School of Physics and Astronomy on our Summer School Taster Days.

Sam and Belal also performed the Light Express show to students on the AimHigher Summer Residential School . The visiting Year 10 students also had a bottle rocket competition and learned about laser fusion.

Sam and Belal are shown standing behind a tank filled with water, which has a powerful laser beam aimed into the water. The light reflects of the surface of the water and is trapped in a similar fashion to the way that a laser beam is trapped within glass within a fibre optic. It's called Total internal reflection (TIR). Sam is showing how the bright light escapes the tank.

I met an Astronaut

2009-12-17T10:36:00.003Z

Last night I met an Astronaut.

I took the photo here of Laura Thomas (who is the SEPnet Outreach Officer at Queen Mary, UCL) standing next to Richard Garriott, the Astronaut, with Lucy Hawking, Stephen Hawking's daughter and novelist.

I was attending the Parliamentary Space Committee: 2009 Christmas Reception entitled "Space for the Future: A Special Celebration of Space Across the Curriculum" it was held in the Members’ Dining Room, House of Commons.

I'd been invited as part of the SEPnet Outreach team who were helping to support the event.

Beautiful Illuminations - Light, art and science

2009-12-03T15:00:00.007Z

On 17 November I helped out with a wonderful "Illuminations" workshop run by the artist Tine Bech and Scientist Kathryn Harkup - at Overton Grange School.

Tine and Kathryn gave an introduction explaining both the science behind light - and artists' use of light in contemporary artwork. Students were then given LEDs to assemble with batteries and magnets - and encouraged to produce drawings with light.

Here are some of the photographs I took at the workshop: -

Nick's Work Experience

2009-07-03T15:15:00.008Z

Last week Nick, my work experience student and I went to help out at the SEPnet Outreach stand at the ASE conference for teachers at the University of Surrey, Guildford.

Nick was 'encouraged' to ride the "The Disco Bike", as he peddled the disco ball turned, lights flashed and music began to blare out of the speakers - human power!

SEPnet links the Universities of Southampton, Kent, Sussex, Royal Holloway (University of London), and Queen Mary, (University of London) together to support Physics. One of the things we do together is the GCSE Outreach project. Year 10 students are invited to the universities to learn about Energy, Radiation and careers in Physics. (The Disco Bike is one of the demonstrations students get to play with).

Nick says:-

"I am a year 10 student who has just completed two weeks of work experience at the School of Physics and Astronomy. During these last two weeks, when not photocopying, I have done lots of amazing and wonderful things including making a hologram, going to the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition up in London (that's Nick being shown a 'science' magic trick - ed.) and going on a tour round Fawley power station. At the start I was given heaps of work such as finishing the year 10 prospectus and various alumni posters but over the past two weeks it has been entwined with lots of fun and interesting experiments and trips which I would never normally do.

I have been treated with respect and I have learnt numerous interesting facts and skills which I will take with me out of work experience. Pearl has been really helpful and has boosted not only my confidence but also helped me improve valuable life skills. All in all, my work experience has been great!"

Thanks Nick, I'll stop twisting your arm now and let you get on with finishing that paperwork!"

Making holograms for the first time

2009-05-21T17:04:00.039Z

Today in Making Space we've been making holograms and I've been teaching Lorna Digweed (Youth Arts Coordinator in Winchester), Nicola and Zac Slaven about laser technology.
Nicola and Zac explain what they've been doing: -

"We made a hologram with a glass plate - its not just glass it had a layer of jelly with tiny bits of silver in it. We made a hologram of a star, earings, two pound coins, a plant and a bracelet.

We put the hologram and the object on a laser rig with the glass side down. In the dark we stood still for two minutes and then we took the black piece of card away for 16 seconds and then we put the card back in over the light.

Then we soaked it in some liquid for 10 seconds, then in to more liquid for 10 seconds, then in to liquid until it went see-through- transparent."

The developer and holography plates for the project were purchased from Integraf. Making holograms using this equipment is quick and gives excellent results.

The photos below show Lorna, Nicola and Zac's holograms illuminated by sunlight - in the court yard at Making Space.

Nicola took some great photos of Zac and Lorna learning about light waves and optics.

Foundation Photonics - world-record breaking

2009-04-23T13:12:00.007Z

This week at the University of Southampton's School of Physics and Astronomy we've produced a world record-breaking number of holograms - 110 in two days, and the students have designed and printed some excellent posters, based on photonics.

Benjamin Charlton, Adam Gibbard, Constantine Tsavliris and Ehab Otman researched Holographic Versatile Disks. Their poster is shown on the left. Benjamin said "HVDs can hold 4 Terabytes of information - which is equivalent to all of Google Earth on two disks - or the library of congress on 6 disks. Impressive!"

Ehab says "HVDs can record up to 1Gb per second - equivalent to a whole movie in one second!"

Work Experience Students Ginny Marshall and Tom Jefferson-Brain from local schools - Mountbatten Language and Sports College and Wyvern Technology College - have been helping run the show. Tom said about his experience,

"I have been thoroughly amazed at the things I have seen. I have learned about lasers and wierd phenomena around light theory - for example; interference, quantum effects and total internal reflection, whilst making holograms that turned out great. I've had the experience of being a student - and seen what it's like to be a member of staff at the front of the lecture theatre - something which many of my peers will not get the opportunity to do. I've had an enjoyable four days so far, not just making cups of tea - like many of my friends have had to do."

Ginny said, "so far my work experience here has been really good, I didn't even know that this branch of science existed before the beginning of this week. Seeing University life might help me make decisions about my future career - I still have no idea what I want to do. Adults have no right to complain about work, I don't want to go back to school!"

The Foundation Year students have seen the Light Express Roadshow. The Head of the course, Dr John Mills made a guest appearance during the show playing his guitar down the laser beam.

Mohammad Bilal, Stephen Elsmere, Trina Ng, Sam Berry and Chris Holmes - the Post graduate student helpers.

A Night with the Stars

2009-04-02T11:18:00.012Z

Our work experience student Isobel Stone from King Edward VI School has written about our 'Night with the Stars'...

"On 1st April, the University of Southampton's School of Physics and Astronomy hosted an open night with a lecture by Prof Greg Parker on Astrophotography. About 45 people attended the event which started with a presentation by Mark Peacock on the World-wide Telescope. There were also some 3D astronomy pictures on display that the younger visitors enjoyed looking at.

Greg Parker then showed us some of the breath-taking pictures which he had taken from the New Forest Observatory (a dome in his back garden). He also showed us the equipment which he uses to take the pictures, some of which require an exposure time of up to 40 hours! One such picture was a beautiful shot of the horsehead and flame nebulae in the constellation of Orion - my personal favourite!"

After the talk there was a live link to Dr Vanessa McBride who is supervising undergraduate Astronomy students currently based at the La Laguna University in Tenerife doing astronomy research projects. Malcolm Coe hosted a Q & A session about the student projects whilst some of the visitors went on tours onto the roof - assisted by PG student Grace Thomson and myself.

The visitors were shown the moon and saturn through five different telescopes. Post graduate researcher Elme Breedt staffed one of the School's Meade telescopes in the dome, whilst under graduate astronomer Hayden Watkins showed people student research projects on extra solar planets, Sam Bradley from the University's Astrosoc - helped out as did 'Ian' from the Southampton Astronomy Society who manned two of his telescopes, one of which was home-made.

The craters and mountains on the moon were clearly visable and many people got the opportunity to see both Saturn's rings and its moon, Titan.

A small group of people did an Astrophotography workshop with post docs Tony Bird and Dave Clark and got some wonderful images of the moon, Saturn, the Orion Nebula and the Pleiades.

Aliens

2009-04-02T09:21:00.003Z

Year 8 Students from Cantell Computing and Maths College took part in a STEMNet project at the School of Physics and Astronomy entitled- "Communicating with Aliens", with the help of Astronomer Sadie Jones (on the right).

Professor Malcolm Coe - also gave students a talk about how far away the nearest Aliens might be. The students researched types and methods of communication with the help of SETI.

Sadie awarded the students a prize of sending a message into Space. The students invited Aliens to earth to have a cup of tea.

Students attended a Q&A session with the Astronomer Patrick Moore as part of the project and took part in the University's Science and Engineering Family Day on the 7 March, which won an award for best Outreach Event.

MIT Exhibition - luminous Windows

2009-01-26T15:48:00.007Z

One of my holograms - 'the Good medicine Cabinet' can be seen at an exhibition at the MIT Museum in Cambridge MA, in the USA at the moment. I've included the 'mock-up' of how the hologram would look - and how it actually looks - the hologram can be seen to the right of the large pile of snow.

The hologram - made with the help of holographer Sam Moree - at the Holocenter, in Long Island City, NY - during an Arts Residency - is a back-lit transmission hologram mounted in the door of a medicine cabinet.

The exhibition has situated 5 holograms from different artists in the windows of the Museum which can be seen most clearly - at night, when they are lit up.

The Good Medicine Cabinet explores our reflective nature, and how it can inspire personal, spiritual, and social change. On one level, the piece is a hologram of medicine bottles sitting inside a medicine cabinet. At a second level of reflection, the hologram is mounted on glass in the door of a real medicine cabinet and a third level of reflection can been seen when the viewer’s image is visible in the reflection on the glass surface of the hologram, superimposed on the bottles of “good medicine.”

The medicines in the cabinet have labels, but the graphics have been altered so that that the bottles appear to contain human emotions and personality traits—anger, pain, procrastination, joy, and judgementalism, among others. The labels denote the positive and negative traits and emotions which are vital to learning on a spiritual journey. (To subvert the product advertising, the original labels were scanned, modified, and the new labels re-imposed onto original packaging.)

Our reflective nature gives us the ability to contain our natural impulses, to aspire to be and do better. Because of it, we get to choose who we want to be on a day-by-day basis. While changing our nature sometimes seems impossible, it can be done—with daily reflection and the decision to act differently. That's what I intended the Good Medicine Cabinet to communicate - but anyone seeing the cabinet may think differently. Thanks to Seth Riskin of MIT for the photos.

Sputtering gold!

2008-09-18T10:35:00.010Z

It's Paul Randall's (my work experience student's) - last day, so I'm giving him one last use of my blog to tell you about Spintronics - some more cutting edge research done by the University of Southampton's School of Physics and Astronomy.

Paul worked with PhD student Roger Buckingham in the nanofabrication cleanroom to find out how scientists use electrons and atomic sized particles to create new ways to store information, measure surfaces at the nanometre level and improve upon current methods of conveying electrictiy in circuit boards. Here's Paul's explaination of what he learnt: -

"The day before yesterday we used an evaporator to create my name 100 microns in size - now I'm going to show you how the evaporator process works and will compare it to that of a sputterer.

When using the evaporator (shown on the left) -only metals with low melting points can be used, whereas with the sputterer almost any element or compound can be used in conjunction with any other.

The evaporating process does not coat the sides of the grove created by the scanning electron microscope - as shown in the diagram to the left.

The flexibility of the sputterer (shown in the photo) is a great advantage, however it cannot send out particles perpendicular to the object, so it ends up coating the top, sides and groves.

When using a sputterer it is important to design a different structure of materials so that the acetone can still reach the plastic layers beneath the sputtered elements. The diagram to the left shows how by using two plastics of two different molecular weights (the layer beneath being lighter) we can create an 'undercut' that prevents complete coverage by the elements.

The above processes are used in many different areas of research. "

Paul's tired himself out with all this sputtering and blogging and head is full - he'll be glad to go back to Thornden School on monday..."

Work Experience - or 'slave labour'?

2008-09-12T15:34:00.011Z

Work experience student Paul Randall - from Thornden School - has been helping me this week with Outreach work at the University of Southampton's School of Physics and Astronomy. I've asked Paul to tell you what he got up to - when I let him off photocopying duty...

"I am a year 11 student doing a two-week work experience placement here at the School of Physics and Astronomy. After being accepted I was very excited and anticipant - since my placement began I have delved into nanoscience, learnt endless pieces of new and interesting information and have always had my views and opinions asked for and taken seriously.

On my first day I was asked to help improve both a nanotechnology poster and a Year 10 prospectus (both of which are being sent to schools round Hampshire) and was also shown both the Holography and the nanotechnology fabrication labs and the equipment they use. Not only has my work experience been helpful and interesting, it has allowed me to meet new people and learn about aspects of science I never new existed.

Creating a two dimensional image with a layer of gold.

With the help of Zondy Webber, one of the technicians, I was taken to the ‘clean room’ - to be inducted into the ways of lithography.

First Zondy coated a centimetre square piece of wafer in a photo resist, a thermo-setting plastic (PMMA). To create a thin film of the liquid on the square we used a spin coater which span at 4000RPM forming an almost perfectly flat layer of about 350nm thick.

Once heated to 1200C the plastic set and a spectrophotometre was used to measure the thickness of the plastic layer (by reflecting light off the surface). The equipment works by literally splitting a beam of visible light in two and sending one half to a sample (used as a control) and the other to the silicon wafer (the reference material). Fortunately in this instance the results revealed the wafer to be suitable to work with.

Using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) we exposed an area of the water to an electron beam that works using a high electric charge (10KV) to accelerate and focus a beam of electrons at the target. The diameter of the beam is a mere 25 nanometres and so is but 1/1600th of the width of a human hair.

This electron beam exposes the PMMA and breaks the molecular bond within it; this creates a groove of weakened PMMA - the depth can be altered by different levels of exposure. Once removed from the SEM the wafer is placed in a solvent to remove the exposed PMMA, it is then placed in a thermal evaporator chamber which melts first chrome and then gold to form vapours which coat the wafer, the grooves and the whole of the chamber. Because the whole wafer is coated in a thin layer of chrome and gold a different solvent is used to remove the unexposed PMMA, leaving only the gold in the grooves as a thin but still visible layer.

We produced the name ‘Paulus’ at 5 different exposure levels to allow us to discover the best level for this thickness of PMMA. The first was ¼ of the recommended exposure which came out as an illegible lump, the second was at ½ of the recommended exposure and was considerably clearer, then at full exposure which was legible and well shaped except for small abnormalities on the second ‘u’. We also tested both double and quadruple recommended exposure levels produced better quality but thicker lettering.

It was amazing to have my name written so clearly at such a small scale that isn’t even close to being visible to the human eye. Looking at the wafer one can only just make out the comparatively giant scratch (which is larger than the size of the words and the even bigger spaces between them) to the upper right of the 5 names. The words are only half the height of a human hair and each letter but ¼ as wide, and each word took an average of less than 10 seconds to complete.

I also worked with Pearl John helping her to create multiple holograms of different objects.

Holograms and Rugby

2008-08-21T13:19:00.006Z

"THE history of holograms is being celebrated in Rugby where Hungarian physicist Dennis Gabor came up with the invention while working at British Thomas-Houston in 1948.

"Holograms, The First 60 Years" is a free exhibition on display at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum until the end of the month. The collection is the first major show of holograms in 20 years and has been devised by art collector Jonathan Ross in association with curators from Banbury Museum and Oxfordshire Museum.

Holographer Pearl John was on hand to help youngsters make simple holograms during a workshop held last Friday, while visitors can still learn about how holograms are made using lasers by watching a short film at the museum. "

The Rugby Observer, Thursday August 14, 2008 www.therugbyobserver.co.uk PAGE 11

24 8-14 year-olds participated in two holography workshops at Rugby Museum and Art Gallery on 8 August 2008 - and some of their comments about the experience included: -

"It was fun to learn how to make holograms"
"It was a bit like magic"
"it was good watching the coin appear."

Jessica Hartshorn, Learning and Outreach Officer at the Rugby Art Gallery and Museum gave invaluable assistance to the participants during the workshops - I'd never worked with that age-group before - and couldn't have done the workshop without her support.

The show looked spectacular again!

Thomas Hardye - holograms and ears

2008-07-18T16:50:00.003Z

Okay, it wasn't quite 'holograms and ears' - more like holograms and hearing.

Year 11 students from Thomas Hardye School visited the University of Southampton last week and spent time making holograms, learning about astronomy and touring the Institute of Sound and Research.
The students arrived and were split into two groups - half of them made holograms with me - and half of the The Thomas Hardye pupils worked with Undergraduate Physics Student Hannah Calcott and Post graduate student Anna Kapinska - an astronomer who studies black holes - to learn about astronomy in 3D, and laser technology.

After working in Physics and Astronomy, students met with Dr Steve Dorney - where they modelled sound travelling through different materials. The Thomas Hardye students then got to experience the anechoic chamber

Apparently they all enjoyed themselves! Everyone is welcome to contact the University to arrange a visit for their students.

60 Years of Holography

2008-05-30T09:41:00.006Z

Holography is 60 Years-old! Can't believe it. I've been making holograms for 25 years now, and recent advances in technology have allowed me to mass-produce holograms with people of all ages. (Thanks to work done by Mike Anderson and Prof T Jeong, who have developed a holography rig and suitable plates and chemistry).

Jonathan Ross has been touring an exhibition of his fantastic holography collection around the UK, entitled; 'Holograms: The first 60 Years', and I was asked to provide some holography workshops to support the exhibitions in Banbury, Oxford and Rugby.

Yesterday I visited Oxfordshire Museum, in Woodstock, and did 6 workshops , helping to make 48 holograms which all worked beautifully. (My thanks to Christina Parker and Davina for their support).

The photos in this blog entry were taken during workshops in Banbury Museum in April. Some of the participants evaluations comments included: 'Fantastic - all of it right level, informative, exciting', 'it was very good', and 'excellent'. Christina Parker at Oxfordshire Museum said it was the best workshop they'd had. I was very pleased.

The Whirlpool

2008-04-08T01:12:00.004Z

This image has been produced by Alex Terris, by data gathered from the Mons telescope in Izana, Tenerife during an astronomy field-trip.

There are two galaxies in the image which are interacting. The larger one is M51. They are probably merging. Alex's team took four images using different filters and then combined them all to get this colour image.

The bluer bits show areas where star formation is taking place in the spiral arms. These areas are blue because there are young, massive stars which are hotter and therefore bluer.

In physics blue is hotter than red! Just like your bunsen burner - the hotter part of the flame is the blue part.

The other students in the team who worked on obtaining the images were: Hannah Calcutt, James Pettler and Claire longbottom - assisted by project supervisor Dr Andrea Dieball.

Where did the Rosette Nebula go?

2008-04-07T21:58:00.014Z

The Astronomy students panicked slightly when the fantastic image that they saw a couple of nights ago of the Rosette Nebula, didn't seem to match the image that they got through the IAC80 telescope at the Observatory in Teide, today. This is a finder chart taken from the Simbad database.

Happily they found out that the object that they were focused on was in the correct region, but was just a few arcminutes out. The Rosette is really very big - the nebula is almost a degree across - very large in astronomical terms. In astronomy widths of objects are usually measured in arcminutes or arcseconds -1/60 or 1/360 of a degree. For the Rosette Nebula - which is approximately 5,200 Light Years away - a degree translates as 130 Light Years across - that is it would take 130 years traveling at the speed of light (1,079,252,849 km/h) to cross from one side of the nebula to the other and it would take us 5,200 light years to get there.

The students also worried that the nebula had disappeared below the limit of the telescope, however the altitude their programme was using to determine the position of the nebula above the horizon was incorrect, placing us and the telescope in the centre of the volcano, rather than on the top of the mountain at the Teide Observatory. The students soon realized the mistake - because the IAC80 is such a clever telescope it informed them that their nebula was still high enough up in the sky to observe. Panic over and back to work.

Images have been taken by the IAC80 telescope by the Astronomy Students; Hannah Calcutt, Alex Terris, James Pettler and Claire longbottom - assisted by project supervisor Dr Andrea Dieball and Santiago the telescope operator.

Where, When, What, Why?

2008-04-07T21:29:00.005Z

Astronomy - I think I'm getting the hang of it, there's a lot of maths and physics involved in working out how to locate your objects in the sky; not only is the earth moving, but everything else is moving too, so making sure that you can find things 'up there' from second-to-second is very challenging.

Astronomers are interested in how old astronomical 'objects' are, how large they are, how heavy they are, how old they are, how far away they are and once they can determine all this information - they can tell us a lot about where we are, what we're made of and where we are going.

The process of getting all this information is rather challenging, as well as mind-blowing. While I am currently sitting in what looks like the control room in the Starship Enterprise, and it's not too cold (we are, after all, up a mountain, above the clouds and it's close to freezing) - I'm about to go outside in the pitch black to try to find my way to the Meade telescope which is on a tripod in the open air - and take a photo of star trails - which will take a 30 minute exposure, outside, in the cold.

While for the astronomers it's a lot more than just taking pretty pictures - that's exactly what I'm hoping to get!

Star Struck

2008-04-07T20:55:00.010Z

The images below from the Simbad astronomical database are shown in the 'negative' so that you can see the stars more clearly!

The image below is of the Cigar Nebula - or M82 by its Messier Catalogue number. The Catalogue is a list of 110 'objects' most of which were compiled by Charles Messier in 1781. On star charts Messier's objects are shown with the letter 'M'� before each number.

This is the Beehive Cluster - or M44.

And the M58 Barred Spiral Galaxy.

Images of the above objects are currently being taken, using the IAC80 telescope, by the Astronomy Students; Hannah Calcutt, Alex Terris, James Pettler and Claire longbottom - assisted by project supervisor Dr Andrea Dieball and Santiago, the telescope operator.

The Fabulous IAC80

2008-04-07T18:28:00.009Z

The IAC80 Telescope at the Tenerife Observatory, Teide is rather fabulous, in comparison to the older Mons telescope. The IAC80 has an 80cm reflector, so can see deeper into the sky.

Our students are using the telescope for their research projects which include looking at the Rosetta, bowtie and Eagle Nebulae, planets, globular and open clusters and spiral galaxies.

The challenge for the students tonight is to ensure that they all have observing time - as the eight students all want to observe different, er, things ('objects´ is the correct astronomical term). Each of the objects the students want to observe will be rising and falling in the sky at different times so they are having to plan who does what, when. It is a race against time.

The telescope has an enormous CCD camera attached to it which is cooled to minus 100 degrees to prevent it overheating. The camera which takes the photos/data has thousands of pixels which aren't 100% reliable. In order to prevent astronomers thinking that they are looking at a star - when they are just looking at a burnt out pixel, the astronomers have to take 'darks' - basically photos with the lens cap on - to use as a reference.

To make things more complicated the astronomers use filters on their telescopes to ensure that they get a clear picture of the object they are focused on, or rather different types of information such as star formation regions and star type. Each student will want a different filter - or rather sets of filters - to ensure that they get the data that they want. Each filter has to be tested individually by producing 'dome flats' - that's images of the dome through the filter - again as a reference point to check the reliability of the filters, mirrors and lenses in the telescope. The exposure times for these flats are going to be between ten seconds and ten minutes each.

It's my last night tonight and I'm going to watch the students observing throughout the night.

http://www.iac.es/eno.php?op1=3&op2=6&lang=en

The Mons

2008-04-06T21:50:00.008Z

The Mons reflecting telescope at the Observatorio del Teide in Izaña Tenerife, is 50cm in diameter, was built in 1972 and is operated by the University of Mons, Belgium.

The observatory is part of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, an international research centre in Tenerife and students from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton are here for a week on a research field-trip.

Dr Christian Knigge, Supervisor on the field-trip is shown here demonstrating how to use the telescope - which takes four or five people to operate it - it's a bit of a beast.

The Astronomers - The Balloon Man

2008-04-06T15:09:00.015Z

Professor Tony Dean, member of staff at the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton and director and superviser on the Tenerife astronomy field trip - was one of the original proposers for the INTEGRAL space mission.

Tony Dean's research is in 'High energy astrophysics' using gamma-ray astronomy to study Active Galactic Nuclei, neutron stars and black hole systems. He is also interested in gamma-ray telescopes.

Tony has a background working with balloon-mounted telescopes - weighing up to 2 tonnes. The enormous balloons pulled the telescopes up into the stratosphere to observe at gamma-rays.

Tony was in charge of the first week of our two-week field trip to Tenerife, working in collaboration with students from the Universidad de La Laguna.

One of the students in Tony's team said 'we're so lucky to have him supervise our project because he's able to advise us on all areas that we need help with - he is able to help with all the science and engineering and has a lot of experience with giving presentations too!'

While I was sleeping...

2008-04-06T13:16:00.021Z

I wouldn't be terribly suprised if the astronomy students on their field trip to the Izana observatory in Tenerife don't particularly want to share their hard-earned data/images with me, because I slept while they worked throughout the night.

Luckily, the staff members are still talking to me and they told me what the students observed through the University of Mons and IAC80 telescopes; the students got good images of Jupiter's moons, saturn, the M61 and M27 galaxies and M16, the Eagle Nebula.

These aren´t, of course, the students' images, but just in case they won't give them to me...

Inspiring!

2008-04-06T12:28:00.010Z

Last night I looked through Simone's huge binoculars at the Orion nebula. You can just about see the nebula which is below Orion's belt. The nebula is also called M42 and is shown in the illustration below. The nebula is approximately 1,270 light years away and is about 24 light years across. It was beautiful- couldn't believe what I was seeing.

A nebula is a cloud of dust, hydrogen gas and plasma. It is the first stage of a star's cycle. In a nebula gas, dust and other materials 'clump' together to form larger masses, which attract further matter, and eventually it will become big enough to form stars. The remaining materials are then believed to form planets.

Night Lunch!

2008-04-06T09:50:00.042Z

Astronomers are made of sterner stuff than I. It's cold on the mountain where we are observing. No, I mean it, it's really cold; I wore all of the clothes that I'd brought along for the 10-day trip last night and I was still cold; I was also the only one who complained about the cold too - I tried not to, but I just couldn't help myself.

As a holographer who has done some of her best work at 2 in the morning I understand how one can get caught up in one's work and stay up really late, however I just couldn't keep up with the Astronomers and wussed out at 1.30am last night/this morning and went to bed.

I got up bright and early and met the students and staff coming back from their night's observing; oh the shame of it - I have undoubtably lost everyone's respect now and will have to do something spectacular to make up for it. Perhaps if I spend all of the day researching astronomy basics to find out what it means to calculate the radius of a globular cluster - which is what Alex Terris, one of the students, wanted to do for his research project - then stay up all tonight without night-lunch (the use of copious amounts of sugar and chocolate to counter the body's overwhelming demand for sleep -even while standing up- during astronomical research) not for any 'holier-than-thou', anti-junkfood sentiment mind, but because I can't eat refined sugar for health reasons - then perhaps, I might regain some of my standing with the Astronomers.

Now, off to Wikepedia to find out about those globular clusters...

On Top of the World

2008-04-06T09:04:00.020Z

'I've looked at clouds now from both sides...'

The students from the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, are on their astronomy field-trip in Tenerife and I'm in the lucky position of observing them observing.

We travelled in convoy up the mountain, driving from the warmth of the beach in Bajarmar, Tenerife, up through the clouds, to the observatory at Izana.

The Astronomers - Dr Andrea Dieball

2008-04-03T10:45:00.011Z

Dr. Andrea Dieball, a supervisor on the School of Physics and Astronomy's Tenerife field trip is a Post Doc Researcher in Astronomy.

Andrea specializes in star clusters...these are star systems which are bound together by gravitational forces. She uses light from far Ultra Violet to Infra Red wavelengths to observe stars in globular clusters.

Globular clusters are the most dense and the oldest star systems that we find in the Milky Way. (Older than 10 billion years) - apparently the universe is about 14 billion years old! There are other types of clusters - for example open clusters which are less dense and younger. (As young as a few million years, but they can be as old as a few billion years - although older open clusters are rare). The Orion nebula is a star forming region with a young open cluster inside - called the Trapezium cluster.

Andrea did her German Diploma (like a Masters degree) and her PhD thesis on Star Clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. The Magellanic Clouds are two of our closest neighbouring galaxies - these ´Clouds´ are orbiting the Milky Way, and this has an influence on the gas found within the galaxies. Whenever they are close either to each other or the Milky Way the gas is disturbed and over time forms stars (less than a few hundred million years).

There is a theory that all stars are formed in star clusters, then the cluster disolves over time and the stars disperse, forming the field star population in the galaxy - these stars are not bound to each other by gravitational forces. Studying Star clusters is important because they trace the history of galaxies.

Andrea supervised the X-Ray Binary Group during the Design in Gamma Ray astromony course. One of Andrea's students said of her, 'she's excellent, terribly helpful and such a lovely person as well!

Andrea also acts informally as the field-trip nurse, looking after student and staff ailments alike.

The Astronomers - Dr Adam Hill

2008-04-03T10:41:00.010Z

Dr Adam Hill is a supervisor on the 'Design in Gamma-Ray Astronomy' course at the University of Tenerife, La Laguna which I have been invited to observe.

Adam completed a PhD on ´Surveying the Gamma-ray sky INTEGRAL' in 2006 at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton, and is now a research fellow. He is continuing his work on the INTEGRAL survey specifically focussing on high mass X-ray binaries and the timing/variability properties of the survey sources. Adam is looking at X-Ray 'flashes' from neutron stars and using the information to gain a better understanding of the star systems that they are located in.
http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/Fox8-2007.htm

A neutron star is formed from the collapsed remnant of a massive star. It's thought that they are comprised mostly from neutrons - which are particles found in the neucleus of atoms. Neutron stars are small - approximately 20km in diameter and very dense. A tea-spoon full of a neutron star -on earth- would weigh a million tonnes. (Gosh!)

The Astronomers - Simone Scaringi

2008-04-03T09:15:00.010Z

Dr Adam Hill and Simon Scaringi

Simone Scaringi is a post graduate student at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton. He did his UG work in Maths and Astronomy, then an MPhil on Astronomical data mining with neural networks on Quasars observed from the Sloan and Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). (A Quasar is an extremely bright and distant active galactic nucleus, - a compact halo of material surrounding the central supermassive black hole of a young galaxy. A survey maps the sky using telescopes.)

Simone now writes decision-making algorithms in order to mine INTEGRAL data for the production of future survey catalogues (a list of all gamma-ray objects seen by INTEGRAL). (Simone works with the MATRIX!). His algorithms are created from data taken from INTEGRAL from the beginning of the mission in 2002 and will be applied to the next data set gathered for the production of a new catalogue. This algorithm gets 'trained' in a similar fashion to a simplified artificial brain (neural network) to recognise real INTEGRAL sources. Because of the dynamic gamma-ray sky he is also interested in transient detection techniques.

Once his algorithm has figured out whether data from INTEGRAL real - or caused by noise - the data can then be used to classify the nature of the source. For example; AGN, X-Ray binaries, Supernova remnants, magnetic cataclysmic variables - when a star orbits a white dwarf and emits multi-wavelength radiation and even gamma-ray bursts!

Every 18 months the amount of astronomical data gathered doubles and there is increasing interest in new techniques to reduce the amount of time taken to analyse all this data. Simone's hoping to apply his algorithms to other wavelengths - and even to multi-wavelength analysis to help astronomers unlock all the information that they are gathering.

Simone is supervising a group of students on the Design in Gamma Ray Astronomy course run by the School of Physics and Astronomy in the University of Tenerife, La Laguna. His group say of him ,

The Astronomers - Dr Lorraine Hanlon

2008-04-03T08:49:00.023Z

Professor Tony Dean (University of Southampton) and Dr. Lorraine Hanlon of University College Dublin.

Dr Lorraine Hanlon is an Associate Professor of Astronomy at University College Dublin. Lorraine's research activities are in the areas of space science and astrophysics, with a particular emphasis on ground-based and space-based studies of gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful and distant sources in the universe.

Lorraine is part of the research group involved in the next-generation space-borne gamma-ray telescope, INTEGRAL, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2002. The group is developing a prototype of the optical camera which will be flown aboard INTEGRAL and is also involved in developing the software for the Integral Science Data Centre (ISDC) which will be used by the scientific community to analyse the data from that instrument. The group is also involved in the study of Blue Compact Dwarf galaxies, Active Galactic Nuclei, Cosmic gamma-ray bursts.

Lorraine is planning to bring her students from Dublin, to Tenerife next year to join those from the University of Southampton and the University of Tenerife, La Laguna. I asked her why she thought it would benefit her students. "It's important because it gets them out of the lab and gives them a real-world environment to work in - they learn to cope with dead-lines and working cross-culturally to get the science delivered". Lorraine also thought that the students were learning very useful transferable skills, important for any future career; presentations skills, working to deadlines, problem-solving and team work.

The gamma-ray students said about her -
"She's amazing - she is, she's been so helpful".

The Astronomers - Prof Ismael Perez-Fournon

2008-04-02T15:19:00.014Z

Professor Ismael Perez-Fournon the Design in Gamma-Ray Astronomy´ course leader at the University of Tenerife, La Laguna, and member of staff at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.

Ismael's research focuses on : -

Es difícil encontrar una línea de investigación en Astrofísica que haya experimentado un avance más intenso en los últimos años que el estudio de galaxias a alto corrimiento al rojo. La última década del siglo XX ha sido testigo de desarrollos tecnológicos impresionantes en Astronomía tanto desde tierra como en el espacio. Las observaciones que estos progresos han hecho posibles, tales como las observaciones de los Hubble Deep Fields con el Telescopio Espacial Hubble y los estudios de seguimiento con los grandes telescopios en tierra (Keck, VLT, VLA, etc.) y en el espacio (como el ISO) son responsables del avance en este campo.

La búsqueda de corrimientos al rojo cada vez más altos ha sido el motor de un número de proyectos que han cambiado gradualmente nuestra visión del Universo. El primer espectro de una fuente extragaláctica obtenido por Slipher en 1912 fue el de M31. La velocidad heliocéntrica de M31 era aproximadamente -300 km/s. El récord de velocidad medido por Slipher fue +1.800 km/s para la galaxia NGC 584. En los años siguientes Humason determinó corrimientos al rojo para una muestra grande de galaxias con el mejor telescopio disponible, el Hale, de 200 pulgadas. Humason se jubiló en 1957, habiendo medido velocidades de recesión de 60.000 km/s en galaxias del cúmulo de Hidra.

Creyó que no se podía llegar más lejos con los telescopios y detectores de la época. En los años 50 y 60 se descubrió que las galaxias que eran las contrapartidas visibles de radiofuentes extragalácticas poseían corrimientos al rojo mucho mayores. El corrimiento al rojo de la radiogalaxia Cygnus A era sólo de 0,06 (medido por Baade y Minkowski en 1954) pero pronto se identificaron fuentes de radio con corrimientos al rojo mucho mayores. El corrimiento al rojo más alto medido por Minkowski fue de 0,46 para la radiofuente 3C 295. Más tarde se descubrieron los cuásares en un programa de identificación de radio fuentes. Maarten Schmidt demostró en 1963 que el corrimiento al rojo de 3C 273 era de 0,158. En las décadas siguientes los proyectos de seguimiento de estudios en radio y en el visible de cuásares y radiogalaxias compitieron entre ellos para encontrar corrimientos al rojo cada vez mayores.

Beautiful Tenerife

2008-04-02T11:07:00.010Z

The photos - taken on a University of Southampton's School of Physics and Astronomy's 'Design in Gamma-Ray Astronomy Course, in Tenerife - are taken from the Defin Hotel, Bajamar, the University of Tenerife, La Laguna and from the car - en-route to the University.

Spain versus Southampton

2008-04-02T11:02:00.008Z

After having worked from 9am-7pm for the last 6 days, students needed time to 'kick off' yesterday during their collaborative UK and Tenerife, Design in Astronomy Course organised jointly by the University of Southampton and the University of Tenerife, La Laguna.

Uncharacteristically, the UK won against Spain!

Space Science - Decisions, Decisions.

2008-03-31T16:15:00.019Z

http://www.mpe.mpg.de/projects.html

The students on the Design in Gamma-Ray Astronomy course from the University of Southampton at the University of Tenerife, La Laguna have a number of decisions to make in order to design a space-based gamma-ray telescope.

The Astronomers, Engineers and Space Scientists need to decide on which materials to use in their telescope to detect gamma-rays; how to protect -or shield- their equipment from solar flares and cosmic rays; in what orbit to place their telescope, (working out the height and the 'eccentricity' - how eliptically the orbit is set up) and lastly, they have to determine the weight of all their proposed equipment - called a mass budget - to determine whether their rocket - launched from florida - can carry it all.
http://www.onet2.pl/dvbs.html

Transient Events in Nearby Galaxies

2008-03-31T14:34:00.026Z

Transient events are bursts of energy from stars which last anywhere from a couple of seconds to a month. These events are difficult to observe because they happen very quickly and are impossible to predict!

The students in Group 6 on the University of Southampton's Design in Gamma Ray Astronomy course in Tenerife are looking for bursts of energy in galaxies outside the Milky way. There are about 40 galaxies in our local group, one of the farthest away in the group being Andromeda, which is about 2.5 million light years away (a light year is the distance that light travels in a year). Group 6 want to study bursts of energy caused by X-Ray binary systems and magnetars in galaxies in and past Andromeda.

A magnetar is a rapidly rotating neutron star with an enormous magnetic field. Magnetars eject energy which can only been seen in the X-ray and gamma-ray regions in beams from their magnetic poles. If there was a magnetar located half-way between the earth and moon, it would strip off all the magnetic data from our credit cards!

Magnetic fields cause powerful emissions from the star and it's these emissions that the students want to study. Students in Group 6 will be able to detect what elements are in the stars that they are looking at - eg. they should be able to spot titanium, iron and hydrogen in the neutron stars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar

In order to observe very distant objects, Group 6 need to design a gamma-ray focusing telescope which includes a large diffracting 'lens' (a new technology called a Laue-lens) with a focal length of around 100 meters. Instead of having a very large satellite -which wouldn't fit in a rocket- Group 6 will fly two satellites in formation 100 metres apart. Light will be directed by one satellite onto a detector on the other satellite, in a similar fashion to the satellites shown in the illustration.
http://www.integral.soton.ac.uk/missions/GRI.html

Group 6: Judit Bakos, Yazmin Padilla Michel, Carolina Berucci, Anastasia-Eleni Tsitali, Benedict Woods and Aron Kisdi.

A Survey of X-Ray Binaries

2008-03-30T16:21:00.020Z

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/X/X-ray_binary.html

What's an X-Ray binary? - Alex Terris - an undergraduate Physics and Astronomy student from the University of Southampton on the 'Design in Gamma Ray Astronomy' course in Tenerife - tells me that it's either "a black hole or a neutron star (a dead star - very dense) orbiting a normal star (like our sun)."

Alex and Group 5 are exploring the magnetic fields of all the X-Ray binaries in the Milky Way. There are about 400 that we know of at the moment and their mission would last about 5 years.

The group have to work out how the X-Rays from the binary systems travel, (nice animation of polarization needed here!). They want to compare the magnetic fields of different types of binaries.

(Group 5: Alex Terris, Jose Sanchez, Emilio Trigueros, Ruben Sanchez, Adam White and Michaelangelo Siracusa).

Wow, Solar Flares!

2008-03-30T15:24:00.021Z

(Photo by NASA)

A solar flare is a violent explosion in the sun's atmosphere.

Solar flares take place in the outer layers of the sun, (called the corona and chromosphere), heat ing plasma to tens of millions of kelvins and accelerating electrons, protons and heavier ions to near the speed of light. The flares produce electromagnetic radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum at all wavelengths from long-wave radio to the shortest wavelength gamma-rays. Most flares occur in active regions around sunspots, where intense magnetic fields emerge from the Sun's surface into the corona. Flares are powered by the sudden (timescales of minutes to tens of minutes) release of magnetic energy stored in the corona.

X-rays and UV radiation emitted by solar flares can disrupt long-range radio communications and radar on earth.

The frequency of occurrence of solar flares varies, from several per day when the Sun is particularly "active", to less than one each week when the Sun is "quiet". Large flares are less frequent than smaller ones.

The outer most layer of the sun - the corona - is much, much hotter than the inside layers. Group 3 on the Design in Gamma Ray Astronomy course at the University of Southampton in the University of Tenerife, La Laguna, are trying to explain why that is! The reason is thought to be due to micro-flares which differ from normal flares in that they do not eject matter from the sun, but trap the accelerated particles, producing more heat as the particles collide and reactions take place. At the base of the flares, the particles which have been accelerated collide with the plasma and react, producing even more heat.

Group 3 are designing a telescope based on two separate satellites, approximately 400 metres apart, to observe solar flares and solar micro flares. The telescope uses a mask on one satellite to filter photons from the sun and focus them onto a detector on the other satellite. The second satellite uses an 'active' sheild to stop unwanted data from being processed. The shield lets all radiation through, rather than blocking any radiation, but the shield senses what wavelength of photons it is receiving and signals to the detector to ignore the unwanted data.

Group 3: Junayd Miah, Hector Brown, Tony Lap Pang, Illeana Leal and Alba Casado Jon MacRae

Um, Active Galactic Nuclei?

2008-03-30T15:09:00.018Z

Group 1 were off to a tricky start on day 2 of their University of Southampton and University of Tenerife collaborative Astrophysics ´Design a Gamma Ray Telescope' project when Babel Fish translated 'initial idea' as 'tapeworm' from Spanish. Working in two languages can be a difficult business, especially when your Spanish phrase book doesn't contain the words 'Active Galactic Nuclei'.

An active galactic neucleus (AGN) is a region at the centre of a galaxy which radiates energy in many wavelengths throughout the electromagnetic spectrum.

The nucleus gives off high energy radiation like gamma-rays and the further away that you get from the nucleus the lower the energy given off eg. radio waves and infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. A galaxy hosting an AGN is called an active galaxy. The radiation from AGN is believed to be a result of accretion on to a super massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. AGN are the most luminous persistent sources of electromagnetic radiation in the universe, and as such can be used as a means of discovering distant objects; their evolution as a function of cosmic time also provides constraints on cosmological models.

There are lots of different types of AGN that can be observed with different electromagnetic emission characteristics. The reason that there is a difference is because of the positioning of the earth in comparison to the AGN. Jets of material are emitted from AGNs and we might observe the jets as they emit material towards earth - or we may see the jets from the side.

Group 1 are trying to design a telescope to observe AGN around the galactic plane.

Nucleosynthesis & Fine Spectroscopy?

2008-03-29T17:47:00.014Z

One of the groups of undergraduate Physics and Astronomy, and Engineering students from the University of Southampton on the Design in Gamma-ray Astronomy course in Tenerife had been given the area of 'Nucleo-synthesis and Fne Spectroscopy' to research. What's that?

James Pettler in Group 4 explained that his group wanted to observe the aftermath of a supernova - which thrusts out gases and heavy elements created as the star collapses. Fine spectroscopy is a method of identifying the radiation emitted by radioactive elements. This radiation will appear as lines on a spectrograph once they are detectected by the telescope.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Crab_Nebula.jpg

The group is currently working on getting enough sensitivity from their telescope's detector. The elements that the students want to observe in space do not give out a huge amount of radiation, so the more sensitive the detector the better. Also, the larger the surface area on the detector the more sensitive - and the larger the field of view too. The field of view needs to be as large as possible to study a supernova and it needs to be larger than the angular resoloution - otherwise the image will be blurred. There is though, a limit to the size of the detector that the group can use - this is determined by the limit of mass that a rocket can launch into space.
http://integral.esa.int/26al_map_annotated.jpg

Gamma-Rays

2008-03-29T16:15:00.026Z

What's Gamma-Ray Astronomy?

The image above is taken of our galaxy using gamma-rays. In the same way we can use infrared to see in the dark we can use gamma-rays to expand what we can see. Gamma-ray astronomy began in the early 1960's when rockets were launched into space carrying scientific equipment which could detect both x-rays and gamma rays. Gamma-rays from space had previously been undetectable because the rays are absorbed by the earth's atmosphere.
(Photo from http://veritas.adlerplanetarium.org/science/EGRET_map.jpg)

Group 2 - UG students from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton on the Design Course in Gamma-Ray Astronomy in Tenerife - are looking at gamma-ray bursts. These bursts of energy come from far away outside our galaxy and -because they are from so far away- they give us an insight into the early universe; the further away the source of energy, the further back in time the energy was given off. Gamma-ray bursts are so bright that if they were visible to the naked eye they would blind us.

Group 2 are designing a telescope which can tell whether gamma-rays come from the merging of very dense neutron stars (collapsed massive stars once larger than our sun, but now approximately 10km across) - or from super novas, (exploding stars at the end of their life-cycle).

Gamma-Ray Astronomy

2008-03-29T15:37:00.021Z

Day one of the University of Southampton's School of Physics and Astronomy Tenerife field trip to the University of Tenerife's Physics department. The trip allows undergraduate Physics and Astronomy, and Engineering students studying Space Science to get a taste of international research work.

Students are put into groups and given research topics to explore. By the end of the week the students are to give hour-long presentations, putting forward proposals to the group on new orbiting gamma ray telescopes.

This week-long project is run (from the University of Southampton's side) by Professor To ny Dean. Prof Dean was one of the original proposers for the INTEGRAL satellite mission, which went through the European Space Agency (ESA) selection process in the early '90s. Researchers from Southampton have been active in the mission since then, responsible for aspects of the instrument design, construction and calibration up to and beyond launch.

Students have to decide on a scientific objective for a new telescope, design the instrumentation needed for the space science mission and then work out the logistics - including the orbit of the satellites, mass budget issues (the weight limit imposed by launch constraints) and how to get the equipment into space. Students have to choose which rocket they could realistically use to place the rocket into correct orbit.

Students also have to work 'internationally´ - each group has one Spanish student in it and we have Hungarians, a South American, an Italian, a Mexican, a German and a Welshman - to communicate with.

(Students From Left to Right Illeana Gomez Leal, Jon MacRae, Hector Brown, Tony Pang)

The research topics (which I don't understand yet) are; Active Galactic Nuclei, Gamma-ray bursts, solar flares, fine spectroscopy and Nucleosynthesis, a survey of X-Ray Binaries and Transient Events in Nearby Galaxies. Each group has a member of staff supporting them in their research.

(Students from Left to right: Junayd Alam Miah and Alba Casado)

Observing Astronomers Observing

2008-03-29T11:15:00.021Z

"I want you to get more enthusiastic about Astronomy" said Professor Malcolm Coe, Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton "so what about accompanying the Physics, Astronomy and Engineering undergraduate students on their field trip to Tenerife?"

- Oh it'ś a hard job being the Śchools' Liaison Officer and Light Express Coordinator for the School of Physics and Astronomy. Obviously I agreed to go on the trip! Yesterday I met with 22 students, 1 Professor, a couple of Post Doctorate Astronomy Researchers and a PhD Astrophysics student at Tenerife Airport. We then traveled by minibus from the south of the island up north, using walkie-talkies to help our convoy navigate the poorly-signed roads.

I took lots of attractive photos; pictures of the spectacular volcanic landscape (which looked as though someone had chucked large sticks of dynamite at the mountains); photos of the enormous wind-turbines turning in the coastal winds - behind them a backdrop of the turquoise ocean. I took photos of the colourful houses in the valleys as we wound our way up the mountains, their gardens decorated with beautiful flowers and spectacular cacti. They were fantastic images, I was so very pleased with myself until I erased them all by mistake while trying to use LINUX for the first time - the Scientist's alternative to Microsoft Windows.

At the beginning of day one at the University of Tenerife in La Laguna I imagined an easy 10 days ahead of light work, followed by afternoons/evenings spent on the beach - a bit of a holiday -for me and the students- surely?

"We're going to do ten year's worth of work in a week" said Professor Ismael Perez-Fournon course leader in Tenerife and member of staff at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. The students eagerly got to down to work and I realised - somewhat in shock - that I have a week to get to grips with the basics of Gamma-ray Astronomy.

Monkeys with Car Keys

2008-03-19T14:03:00.008Z

'Monkeys with Car Keys: The Artist in Response to Culture Today.'

The private view of the second of the Bargate monument annual open exhibitions - organised by A Space was held last night.

The title of the exhibition was inspired by a fridge magnet which read: - 'Without Art we'd just be monkeys with Car Keys'.

I submitted the piece 'The Good Medicine Cabinet' which I produced during a residency at the Holocenter last year. The piece explores our reflective nature, and how it can inspire personal, spiritual, and social change.

The new Bargate monument Gallery housed 12 new pieces of artwork - chosen from over 100 entries.

Thanks to Peter Penrose for showing such interest in my work. (Top left)

Light Express at the Theatre

2008-02-12T15:23:00.006Z

100 pupils from Bitterne Park Secondary School came to the University and Nuffield Theatre for a day of Light and Sound workshops with the School of Physics and Astronomy, The Institute of Sound and Vibrational Research and Nuffield Theatre's Education department.

Steve Elsmere, Anna Kapinska, Dr Keith Wilcox, David Cutler, Mohammad Belal and myself ran the Light Express Show - demonstrating how lasers carry our voices and data across the internet and mobile phones.

Here are some quotes From Bitterne Park Year 8 pupils about the science visit to Nuffield & ISVR 010208 “awesome”, “brilliant” and “fun” were words that many used to describe the day.

“I couldn’t believe how much lasers help you out in your everyday life, for example using a mobile phone and the internet.”
Tom Gooch

“I liked it when the lasers came up above our heads and the tank showing the laser being reflected.”
Shannon Thorne

“It was fascinating how different coloured lasers can be used to form interesting patterns.” Kirsty Hunt

“Educational but fun.”
Hollie Upson

Mark Dymock a Lighting Designer for The Nuffield ran inteactive Lighting workshops in the Nuffield Theatre to show students how science was used behind the scenes.

“Interesting to see what we could do with our drama skills combined with science.”
Rachel Nevill

“It is amazing to see how many skills can be combined in a theatre performance.”
Ethan Bligh
“It was great fun finding out what it’s really like in show business.”
Turner Crosby
“It is interesting to know what happens behind the scenes in the theatre.”
Chloe Cross
“I found out how science is important to everyday life and how important it is.”
Tom Millard
Dr Steve Dorney did a sound workshops for the students - demonstrating how glass wobbles and why whales use bubbles to capture fish.

“It’s cool that you can measure sound in so many different ways.”
Danny Foster

Dr Dorney also took the students to the anechoic chamber in ISVR.

“I liked the room we went to with the square foam where it was quiet inside.”
Saila Hannan

“It was really fun learning about and seeing lasers and playing with the glasses, but really interesting as well. I learned how lasers can transport information and that vibrations can make things move and make weird sounds”.
Patara Parker

“It was really, really good with all the experiments and stuff.”
Daisy Andrews

Thanks to Sharon Lawless and the staff at Bitterne Park school for organising the event - and to the pupils for being so positive about the day! Photos by Sharon.

A pinch of fibre

2008-02-08T16:20:00.000Z

Here are some wonderful new photographs, taken by Andy Vowles in our Cartographic Unit here at the University of Southampton.

The photos show Light Express laserist and sensor specialist Mohammad Belal, holding a fibre optic fabricated at the Optoelectronics Research Centre. (ORC)

To get technical - the laser system used to illuminate the fibre is a professional light show system combining the three primary colour lasers; a green red diode laser and green and blue ND: YAGs.

With thanks to Rachael Abbot of the ORC who helped to commission the photo - and aided with the art direction. The image will now be used by the University's marketing department for our website photos.

Creative Partnerships - Holography and Photography 'Identity' Workshops

2008-01-04T16:15:00.000Z

During November and December we took part in a Creative Partnerships 'Identity' Project with 60 Sholing Technology College Year 8 Students and artist Garry Kennard of the Art and Mind organisation.

During this Creative Partnerships project students made holograms of objects that are precious – or unique to them - to explore issues of identity creatively. Students learnt about Biometrics and used drawings of their own fingerprints as creative starting points to produce photograms. Students also explored the science behind the photographic and holographic light-based media to learn what made their artwork possible – doing hands-on activities with lasers and optics.

Some of the students’ feedback included:-

Class 8MT

‘I really enjoyed making the holograms and seeing the end product…I have something that represents me’.

‘It helped me think about what to do in the future’. P.S. IT WAS AMAZING!’

Class 8MR
‘I have never made holograms before. It’s the best science lesson’.

‘I wouldn’t normally do this but I thought it was awesome!’

‘We’ve all worked hard…but we haven’t been made to work hard’.

We all worked together and helped each other, so we made…perfect holograms’.

An exhibition of drumming, photograms, holograms, poetry and totempoles that the students made will be on show for the whole school and friends and parents of the students in March.

Reigate Hill Rotary Holography

2008-01-04T12:18:00.001Z

I was invited to give a holography demonstration -along with a talk on Photonics- to members of the Rotary Club of Reigate Hill on October 10, 2007. Approximately 20 members of the club listened politely to my talk and watched a hologram being made in the Restaurant at the Reigate Manor Hotel.

I'm pictured here explaining how laser light hits the holographic plate - from above and below - in order to produce the holographic image on the plate (at least that's what I think I was saying!).

It's amazing that you can now make a hologram on a restaurant table infront of a room full of people - thanks to some cutting-edge technology. My holography rig was supplied by Mike Anderson [contact me if you'd like his address] with holography plates and chemistry purchased from Integraf. The equipment and holography materials allow a 12 second exposure of an object with a laser safe to use in public and a 10 second developing time.

The President of the Club Maggie Jackson made the hologram infront of the hushed audience, and my Father Michael John, (member of Reigate Rotary Club) is shown here drying the hologram with a hair-drier.

Pip Ward - a member of the Rotary Club - views a display hologram after the demonstration.

I was very grateful to learn that the members distributed schools' information packs to their local schools as a result of attending the talk which encouraged everyone to support their children and grandchildren (particularly girls) to take part in science at school and at home.

Thanks to Maggie Jackson for the invite - and to Michael Jones for the photographs.

Good Medicine

2007-09-25T16:58:00.001Z

I've just been lucky enough to spend a week in Long Island City's Center for Holographic Arts. I won an Artist-in-Residency making holograms with the help of artist Sam Moree who produced this piece 'The Good Medicine Cabinet' for me. We made an achromatic white light transmission hologram - or 'Light Work' of medicines whose labels had been 'doctored'. You might just be able to make out the 'anger' lable on the bottle of pills in the bottom left hand corner of the hologram. Other medicines included 'imperfection' lotion, 'hope' plasters and 'judgementalism' tablets. Many thanks to Ana Maria Nicholson, artist and the Director of the Holocenter - for her personal and professional support during my project.

Many thanks too to Martina Mrongovious for taking these photo at the gallery talk I gave on 'Holographic Space' on completion of the project.

Artists Ikuo Nakamura, Susan Dumitru (with Aiden and Lawrence), Doris Vila, Mike Wenyon and other fine art holography supporters turned up for the talk on Holographic space. Many thanks to the International Holography Fund for making this experience possible.

Gifted and Talented

2007-08-23T11:05:00.000Z

I've been lucky enough to have some help from Richard Webb - a work experience student from a local college - this week. Yesterday we hosted an Introduction to Photonics workshop here at the University of Southampton's School of Physics and Astronomy - here's what Richard had to say about it.

"Yesterday we had an interesting morning with a number of National Academy of Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY) students which started off with a short talk on photonics and optics. We then got straight to making holograms and had some great results; there were some brilliant holograms of monsters, gears and coins and everyone got to keep their masterpiece. We then had some hands-on activities for the students to get involved with, such as spectroscopy, 3d astronomy and a great talk from a theoretical astronomer. After a short break there was a video on Careers in Optics [free CD from SPIE] followed by a short tour of the physics and holography lab and a lovely lunch. All in all everyone had a great morning."

(photo by Tom Sloan taken during Creative partnerships project)

What did the students say who took part think? : -

" It was something to do in the holidays and you got your own hologram"

"It made me consider issues I wouldn't normally think about"

"Ecouraging thinking about a topic that we haven't looked at before. We all took part, it was a very hands-on workshop"

My thanks to Charlotte Everitt of our Outreach and Partnership Team who organised the event and to Katrine Rogers, Greg Elliott and Sarah Clark who helped with the students.

All aboard the Light Express

2007-06-08T12:53:00.001Z

What is the Light Express Roadshow? A travelling laser light show from the University of Southampton's School of Physics and Astronomy. The show is filled with spectacular demonstrations and accompanied by a fascinating talk about the laser technology behind the internet. The show visits schools around the South-East region and performs about 30x a year.

Take a look at some of Dr James Gates's photographs of the show. It takes us about 3 hours to get ready for a school laser show - which lasts about an hour.

The show is free for schools and is aimed at GCSE Science students - or AS/A Level Physics students.

The Light Express Roadshow - March madness!

2007-06-08T12:03:00.000Z

After Science week next came the 'Creating the future' science conference for Year 10 students on 27th. The Conference included 4 lectures - with lots of explosions and dry ice from the speakers - and was held in the Turner Sims Concert Hall.
David Phillips OBE from Imperial College gave a talk 'Light Relief' on the use of lasers in medicine. The talk was filled with gory slides, glow in the dark chemicals and loud noises. It was really good.

Then came "The Mathematics of Shadows and Slices." We learned that shadows are powerful things when combined with a little mathematics! Dr Marvin Jones, School of Mathematics talked about how maths and shadows were used to develop CAT scans.

We got some good feedback for the Light Express Show from students which included comments such as: ‘Cool lasers!’, ‘It was entertaining and involved the audience so we stayed engaged and interested. It was easy to follow.’ and - ‘It was well explained and easy to understand, with interesting practical demonstrations and an engaging start (the light show).’ - So we were pleased!

Lastly Prof Phil Bartlett gave a talk on building nanostructures “Nanostructured Metals, Butterflies and Lotus Leaves.”

We were lucky to IBM supporting the event too with some of their Outreach activities. About 320 students attended and we had some great feedback.

Opaque, translucent or transparent?

2007-02-05T16:01:00.000Z

The second half of Year 8 from Bitterne Park school visited the University of Southampton last week for our Creative Partnerships project.

More than 100 excited Year 8 students (13 year-olds) visited the Institute of Sound and Vibrational Research, (ISVR) the School of Physics and Astronomy and the Optoelectronic Research Centre's )ORC) fibre manufacturing facility to learn about light and sound. They also had a workshop in lighting to learn about colour and mood at the Nuffield Theatre.

Students looked in each other's ears to learn about their hearing in the ISVR, they dressed up in clean room gear at the ORC and made photograms (above) in Physics and Astronomy. The students also worked with ORC students doing hands-on fun activities relating to light, fibre optics and telecommunications.

Today I visited Bitterne Park to do an activity with torches and morse code. We explored the problems and benefits inherent with sending messages with light. I also showed students my new fibre optic umbrella, and by the end of the lesson they were able to tell me how it worked.

The Creative Partnerships project is designed to improve the students' understanding of the Science of light and sound using creative means.

We will evaluate the project next week - after I make holograms with one of the classes.

Business as usual - photonics education for 13 year-olds.

2007-01-22T16:56:00.000Z

Phew, just finished a fun, but exhausting day with 100 Year 8 Students visiting the University from Bitterne Park School, Southampton. We were all taking part in a Creative Partnerships project involving Nuffield Theatre, The Institute of Sound and Vibration and the School of Physics and Astronomy here at the University of Southampton.

The Creative Partnership project aims to find out whether taking part in a theatrical production based on Einstein's life can help Year 8 students with their Science lessons. We'll soon find out! Students will use what they have learned today about light and sound and incorporate it in their performance.

Here in Physics we introduced students to how Astronomers use colour - and the invisable parts of the electromagnetic spectrum - to see further into our universe. We showed students how we can manipulate light in fibre optics and telecommunications to allow us to send data from one side of the world to another, and lastly, we showed students how we can capture light through simple photographic processes (we made photograms).

I need to thank the Optoelectronic Research Centre (ORC's) OSA Chapter Lightwave crew and staff members who entertained the visitors with hands-on optics activities in half-hour interactive sessions. Students learned about fibre optics, total internal reflection and refraction and most importantly, they learned that research scientists are young, dynamic people who are really enthusiastic about their subject.

Our visitors were shown around the 'dairy box' at the ORC - the new research facility where fibre optics and sensor research is undertaken. I learned today that there are optical sensors in most rivers around Europe now which constantly monitor for polution - if anyone dumps nitrates -which kill fish- into a river the river authorities will know about it immediately!

Some of our visitors got dressed up in the 'bunny suits' - seen on the left - and their friends and classmates took photos.

The project will run until March - we will have another 120 visitors on the first of February - and I will be going into school four times between now and then - we'll make holograms and send signals to one another using morse code and torches. I'm looking forward to the theatre performance! Watch this space!

Making Holograms at the Castle

2006-08-11T16:27:00.000Z

During the 7th International Display Holography Symposium, Dr James Gates and I, taught two holography workshops - to primary school Children in St.Asaphs, North Wales. The workshops were held alongside the Symposium's holography exhibition at Bodelwydden Castle, and we were working on behalf of the OpticTechnium and Careers Wales, to bring holography to the masses.

The workshops went well, all 28 pupils went away with holograms that they'd made (some better than others) and a Welsh dragon made by Inaki Beguiristain- the one that graced the cover of the symposium proceedings. The pupils were delighted. I was delighted to see Fred Unterseher being asked to sign autographs as he talked to some of the students about his work.

Here are some of the comments from the students - about the exhibtion and the workshops (spelling has been retained for purposes of authenticity) :-

"The lazers were great!" (I think that was 'holograms' were great', but at least the student remembered there was a connection.)

"We were scared to go up but we made it and told our designs were good."

"I couldn't decide on which was my favourite. A Spooky hollogram was a man (Hans Bjelkhagan with his dog) and he would stare at you and a fair amount of people got freaked out about it..."

(Actually that was a full-colour 1.5mx1m hologram and I was one of those 'freaked out' too!)

"We met some holographers and got their autographs." - (Bless!)

"I thought the holograms were great and thank you for your invite to the workshop".

"...we had a brilliant time making and seeing holograms. We think the lady with the cup of tea was brilliant." (Yes, me too Jeffrey Robb's Great Aunt. )

Doing the workshops on the last day of the Symposium was very rewarding, we created another 30 holographers - perhaps some of them might get hooked...

Blind spot?

2006-07-24T18:49:00.000Z

"Experts are the most dangerous" - at least that was what I was told during my 3-day laser safety course with the Laser Institute of America. I was made to take the safety course before I started teaching Laser Technology to High School students at the Columbia Career Centre, Missouri in 1998.

I was reminded uncomfortably of this saying during one evening's entertainment at the Display Holography Symposium. An eminent scientist whom I had the greatest respect for, was showing off a new purchase - a 20mW green laser pointer - to the group of impressed holographers surrounding him. He was aiming his laser at distant trees in the garden of the castle where we were for the evening. Having had to apply recently for permission to do an outdoor beam show, I knew what damage a laser could do to a plane - or rather it's pilot, so I was concerned in case he missed the trees and went off into the sky, so asked him politely not to aim the pointer upwards. He ignored me and continued showing the laser off. I was furious.

The incident reminded me that many holographers I know either don't know, or don't care, about laser safety. After a Master's degree at the Royal College, I didn't know that a 5mW laser can give you a blind spot in a shorter time than you can blink and that you should use laser safety glasses.

Well, I'm sure that most holographers would scoff at that point - and I will hear loud protestations about my suggestion to wear glasses. (I know that they are expensive, but it is possible to use glasses with an optical density that allows you to still be able to see the beam!). Ok, I would yield to the arguement that it's a pain to have to wear the glasses - except for the fact that I've had a beam in the eye - (it was frightening) - and I know one of my previous employers has been hit in the eye a number of times and has two blind spots.

So big deal - we've all naturally got blind spots haven't we? But, a laser beam in the eye from a low powered laser can lose you up to two lines of visual accuity when doing those eye tests, reading off the lines - after being hit.

So, I would like to know - if you would want to argue with me about laser safety issues and say that I'm over-zealous. Have you been hit?

I think that it is almost impossible to re-train someone once they have established their bad habits - I have far too many. At least now I take my watch off whenever I go to turn a laser on - without even thinking about it. But I know that when I'm teaching or acting as a role model I am building habits that will last a lifetime.

That cartoon isn't so funny really, is it?

Please check out Rockwell Laser Industries for more info on the safe use of lasers.

Guffaw!

2006-07-20T16:27:00.000Z

There's something really quite extraordinary about seeing eminent scientists, historic figures - ones that you are somewhat in awe of - 'goofing off'.

I never really got over dancing with Denisyuk and Benton in a Chicago night club (RIP to both) - or seeing Denisyuk in his swimming trunks at the Lake Forest Holography Symposium as he went for his morning dip in Lake Michigan.

So, it's with that sense of the surreal that I bring you these photos taken at Ruthin Castle Mediaeval banquet. Here is King Hans Bjelkhagan and Emeritus Professor of Optics Prince T. Jeong et al. Giggle... perhaps someone could kindly name everyone for me?

Jon Mitton - Simply the best?

2006-07-18T14:14:00.000Z

More holograms from the 7th International Symposium on Display holography's exhibtion at Bodelwyddan Castle.

Reflection hologram on glass. Animated 7" diameter circle. Steel and brass tilting wall display. (Thanks to Mark Diamond for this set of photos).

Ok, I'm biased - Jon Mitton is a friend - but these holograms of his are among my favorites.

Reflection hologram on glass. Animated. 7” diameter circle. Steel and brass tilting wall display.

The red image is of a caged ball, revolving.

'You will Obey', 1992.
Reflection Multiplex hologram. Silver Halide on glass.
The Jonathan Ross Hologram Collection.

Thanks to David Pizzanelli for the photos.

A brief aside - Run for Life

2006-07-17T16:19:00.000Z

Please forgive me for using my work blog for a personal issue, but I’d like to thank those at the University of Southampton and those from the 7th International Symposium for Display Holography, who sponsored me in the Race for Life.

Taking part in the 5km race, along with 10,000 other women on Southampton Common on the 16th July, was probably one of the most moving experiences of my life.

I’m not one for the ‘fun-run’, but I thought that this was worth the discomfort of training for. The Race for Life is a charitable fund-raising event in aid of Cancer Research.

We were encouraged to write down the names of the people we were running in memory of, and display them on signs on our backs. If it wasn’t for cancer research, I shouldn’t be here – my Mother is a survivor, however her sister died from cancer at the age of 36. I have 3 friends struggling with cancer at the mo too, so I wrote all their names down on a sign which I pinned to my shirt.

I wasn’t the only one. As I jogged behind (and passed) different women during the event I had to wipe the tears away - it’s one thing to know that cancer kills one-in-three, but it’s another thing to be confronted by their names, their faces and the terms of endearment from those who loved and lost them - in their thousands.

Thanks again – for the sponsorship – and the opportunity to be one of the heard.

A problem? Nah...

2006-07-13T13:07:00.000Z

It's about time I reported on my presentations.

Firstly - James Gates & I gave a paper on our Holography Educational experiences - we're about to have more as we are doing 2 holography workshops with primary school children tomorrow at the Castle. Hum, we've been given a third floor room with thick carpets in which to make holograms!

Oh well, we love a challenge.

Anyhoo, our talk on Monday was about teaching holography to Foundation Year (Engineering & Physics) students using problem-based learning. Think of the Foundation Year as a pre-Undergraduate degree course taken at University.

During the week-long 'Photonics' module we showed the students how to make a hologram and gave them a problem to solve. We told them we'd booked a lecture theatre for them, and at the end of the week they would have a public audience for a mini-symposium on holography.

The students were to write a paper, make holograms - and exhibit them, give a presentation and produce a well-designed poster - all based on holography -theory and applications. Ha! Some of them paled - but most rose to the challenge! Double the number of students applied to take an Undergraduate degree in Physics from the Foundation course than previously had.

If you want to know more, buy the proceedings - or get in touch.

Augi, Augi, Augi - oy, oy,oy!

2006-07-13T11:37:00.000Z

Oh, I know that those of you in the US won't know what the title of today's blog means - it's a Welsh ruby battle cry - usually spelt Ogi. I'm a big fan of August Muth's (Augi's) DCG holograms they are just amazing.

Immerse, 2006,
Empyrean Orb, Dichromate gelatin on glass, 2006
Internal Reflections, 2002

Back a bit.

2006-07-12T20:36:00.000Z

More about Fuji and other emulsions (yesterday - 11th July) - from Gates:

'You can feel a real buzz of excitement amongst the holographers that Fuji Hunt - a large film company - is showing such intest in the field. (Maybe the free pen has made me slightly biased!) [ed: we tried the Fuji film using red - for educational purposes - we were able to develop in 10 seconds using ascorbic acid, very useful when you are doing holography workshops!]

Sefra and Geola also presented their new ultra fine panchromatic emulsion which they developed for pulsed laser operation. The advantage of the new emulsion is its small grain size, which they claim to be 10nm.

Colourholographics also plugged their panchromatic emulsion - you can almost taste those Smarties!

The brilliant Jeff Blyth (consultant to Smart Holograms) also gave a talk on some of his latest work on improved sensitivity of dichromated gelatine.

After another tasty lunch in the street (the name of the dinning area) it was the turn of the digital holographers.

The session started with a fabrication system developed by Tesa Scribos from Germany. It's a neat system that can make small, unique holograms in one second - its main application is in security.'

....... more of everything to follow.

The Craft, the craft!

2006-07-12T20:11:00.000Z

Can you believe these! Gorgeous. Glass Bowl (2004) and Delft Vase (2006), Inaki Beguiristain - multicolour reflection holograms - silver halide on glass, ooh.

More, more!

2006-07-12T20:04:00.000Z

Here's Australian artist Martina Mrongovius, next to her work Memory Space, 2006 - a full colour reflection digital hologram which won the 7th International Display holography Symposium Geola prize - arranged by Jonathan Ross.

The Art, the art!

2006-07-12T14:25:00.000Z

Random photos from the holography exhibition opening last night. I am going to put them up - then check the details later!

First ones by Fred Unterseher
Mandala 18R and next Mandala 037.

Eat, drink and be merry!

2006-07-12T14:05:00.000Z

Partly in response to the sobering nature of the atmosphere of the first couple of days at the symposium - having been faced with the reality of our own mortality - gulp - and partly because everyone had sat for hours and hours listening to presentations - we really let loose last night and had a blast!

Giggle.

Thanks to Mark Diamond for the photo and Rob Munday for the specs!

Absence

2006-07-11T15:27:00.000Z

Here in spirit. Denisyuk.

One of Hans Bjelkhagan's 30x40cm holograms, in the foyer of the Optic Technium.

The opening day of the symposium was really all about remembering Denisyuk, Benton and Leith - and missing them.

Small world

2006-07-11T13:12:00.000Z

Last night at the BBQ I chatted to artist Ya-Ling Huang, and writer/holographer Odile Meulien Öhlmann. Ya-Ling works at the Graduate School of Visual Communication Design in Tainan, Taiwan and produces beautiful dot matix holograms.

Ya-Ling had given a superb talk about art and education earlier in the day. She had been using holography to help primary-aged school children solve soma puzzles which help with spatial intelligence training. This training was thought to aid children with learning mathematics and science. Ya-Ling showed films of children looking at individual holograms and holographic illustrations (horse hologram) in childrens' books.

All three of us agreed that we needed to teach children holography at an earlier age.

Oh, and Ya-Ling and I had lived in the same town, Columbia, Missouri - where Fred Unterseher and Becky Deem now live. What are the odds.?.......

Show and tell

2006-07-11T10:38:00.000Z

Rooms have been set aside for people to display their holograms.

Geola had some really nice colour holograms - there were, however, some I didn't like at all - the headless, topless woman, for example. I'm only going to include one of the 'nice' ones!

The turquoise and pink colour on these 8' x10' orchids by Geola is extraordinary. The digitally produced reflection colour stereograms have horrizontal parallax only.

There are also some wonderfully subtle, full colour reflection holograms made by Hans Bjelkhagan.

Amazing emulsions

2006-07-11T10:08:00.000Z

Dr James Gates - or Gates - explains: -

'Tuesday morning we were greeted by Nicholas Phillips who was Chairing today’s session on holographic films and emulsions. One of the most interesting talks was the work on the Silvercross Project which aimed to produce emulsions with fine grain size. E. Mirlis presented an emulsion that they had developed with a 10nm grain size which vastly reduced the Rayleigh scattering effects and reduced that purple haze.

Greg Jackson from Fuji Hunt introduced their new Silver Halide holographic film. It’s a panchromatic film with a 45% diffraction efficiency and a resolution of 3000 lines/mm, but to the dismay of Nick Phillips, only had a grain size of 30-40nm. Well, you can’t keep everyone happy!'

Ooh, colour!

2006-07-11T09:50:00.000Z

As I finished eating my dinner at the Symposium BBQ, I spotted a man standing on a chair holding a green spotlight above his head, a group of holographers huddled around the table beneath him.

It’s not normal behaviour around a dinner table is it? No - well, yes - for holographers.

Putting my napkin down I sauntered over to join the throng, Craig Newswanger of Zebra Imaging was showing holograms created by their new digital printing system. Loads of depth produced from satellite images, very bright reflection holograms, pixelly, but very appealing.

Smart!

2006-07-11T09:03:00.000Z

At the dinner table Wendy McLean - research scientist at Smart Holograms - dipped her hologram in a wineglass full of water and I watched, amazed, as the image on the holographic plate disappeared to reveal another beneath.

Jeff Blyth consultant to Smart Holograms, to me how they were also using holography to create a non-invasive method of testing blood sugar levels. The holographic emulsion could react to your tears – changing colour to indicate where blood sugar levels were too high. It was hoped that one day this research would be useful to diabetics. Good stuff!

Making history

2006-07-10T13:43:00.000Z

Dr Sean F. Johnston, Science historian from the University of Glasgow, has written a book on the history of holography - a huge, gorgeous, hardback book. Holographic Visions: A History of New Science (Hardcover). It's now available on Amazon.co.uk.

I am - of course - rather desperate to know whether I'm in there - and I'll bet I'm not the only one!

I wonder whether Sean is going to have to write himself into the history of holography from now on?

Let the presentations begin

2006-07-10T12:50:00.000Z

Walking into the stunning, hi-tech OpTIC building’s conference centre we were greeted by a huge (1.2m x 1.2m) holographic monster. Um, wow! The full-colour digital holographic creature was made by XYZ Imaging (?) and Geola. (I will double check).Technically fantastic, but rather nasty looking.

I counted about 90 in the audience as David Rimmer, the Director of the Technium OpTIC, Profs Hans Bjelkhagan and Tung Jeong, Symposium Co-Chairs, and Dr Martin Richardson the Art Chair – opened the event, welcoming us all.

TJ gave us an amusing history of his experiences as an educator in the early '70s - he had paid £1000 for a 1mW HeNe laser with a 3 month guarantee, but taught students who ended up working for Gabor. TJ then showed everyone Lake Forest Symposia photos from 1982. Audience members shouted out when they recognized someone. He welcomed new holographers into the community too. TJ will display those photos on the www.holographer.org website – look out for them.

Next – reports from the nations.

Conference kick off!

2006-07-09T10:03:00.000Z

The start of the Symposium...

In a small pub in North Wales – with World Cup Final cheering in the background – the great and the good of the holography world gathered (with absentees – sorry if you couldn‘t make it) and registration began.

Old friends lined up to sign in, greeted by Hans Bjelkhagen (one of the conference Chairs) and the Technium OpTic (Opto-electronics Technology and Incubation Centre) staff.

I was delighted to buy one of Kaveh Bazargan's conference proceedings Advances in Display Holography: Papers presented at the 7^th International Symposium on Display Holography - as I checked in. Can you imagine, a beautifully type-set, fully edited, full colour printed hard-back proceedings handed to you at the start to a conference?! And with an Iñaki Beguiristain hologram on the front cover of a Welsh dragon with attractive, fringed wings. Fab!

Despite authors submitting their papers outrageously late (–um, this author included) Kaveh and his team at River Valley Press pulled off a minor miracle and produced a bit of a masterpiece.

So armed with my weighty proceedings and nifty conference shoulder bag which contained a copy of the aforesaid proceedings on disc (nice-one!), I ventured into the throng to network and take notes.

The symposium -- almost there

2006-07-08T13:14:00.000Z

Yawn – stretch - five hours driving from Southampton and James Gates & I arrive in St.Asaphs, North Wales. We turned up at the Bodelwydden Castle (overlooking the beautiful, green landscape around St Asaph) to see whether we could give Jonathan Ross a hand with the holography exhibition at the last minute. I am sorry to say that I was absolutely no help at all, Jonathan and Martin Richardson had been hanging the exhibition since last Thursday and it looked amazing. (Exhibition ‘review’ to follow.).

Back at the hotel we lurked in the bar and it wasn’t long before Iñaki Berunistein (of super pseudocolour reflection holograms fame) and Turkish holographer Huseyn Gundogdu (MTMsecurity.com) came in and sat down for a chat. Kaveh Bazargan joined us and told us about how his company intended to record the conference presentations in multimedia format. The photo shows Kaveh with the conference proceedings he has produced. This will be available on Amazon.co.uk after the Symposium.

We thought of the holographers who had died recently and mourned not just their passing, but also the fact that we didn’t even have them on film. :(

All aboard the Light Express!

2006-07-04T15:24:00.000Z

Shattered - Dr James Gates (on the left) and I have just finished another Light Express Roadshow performance. The Light Express is our Photonics Schools' Outreach activity at the University and it's our Open Day - we've performed to over 4,000 students and members of the public this year - no wonder I'm tired.

The show includes a variety of spectacular demonstrations - using our new 3-colour diode pumped laser system - to try to entice more students to study Photonics - or Physics - at University.

It takes us about 3 hours to set up the show - it's rather like setting up a mobile disco, but with some serious safety considerations to contend with. The lecture - which I give - takes about 40 minutes and explains how vital lasers are to modern life - we focus on telecommunications and how lasers run the internet.

Now, back to finishing those presentations for the conference and I'm wondering whether we can use the Light Express laser system for colour holography.....

Don’t touch it!

2006-07-04T14:37:00.000Z

Students from Woodlands School making holograms.

When you’re 13 – and full of curiousity - it’s difficult to follow instructions – at least that’s what I learnt yesterday doing a holography workshop with a group of school children from the Hundred of Hoo School in Rochester. I had been invited by their Head of Science (in my capacity as Schools Outreach officer at the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton) to run a couple of holography workshops during the school's Sci-art festival.

The whole school had a theme of ‘habitats’ to work with and all subjects and lessons were loosely based on the theme. There was an atmosphere of great excitement among students and staff because of the festival. I was there to teach the students about ‘light’ which is, after all, an important part of our habitat.

I brought in a holography rig - made by Mike Anderson – I call it the Martini holography rig - (any-time, any-place anywhere!) – with Slavich plates (PFG -03 and Integraf’s JD 4 developer) however we struggled to get good results. There was a drama workshop going on upstairs and we couldn’t stop the banging, crashing and chair scraping during our 25 second exposures.

I haven't worked with Year 8 students before - and it showed - the 18, 13 year-olds ran rings around me, however we did have a lot of fun. I asked the students to think of themselves as giants – every step they took and even their breath causing enormous vibrations. I asked them not to touch the table at the front of the classroom where the holography rig was set up – well they were so curious that I had to ask repeatedly for them not to touch the table. ‘No, really, don’t touch the table!’ ‘Step away from the table!’

We did eventually get satisfactory results – by removing ¾ of the students to a computer room where they worked on putting together posters on holography.

It’s useful to have two classrooms to work in while making holograms – one where the students can dry the holograms, while the others are shooting. Schools in England have the following materials that they can provide without any trouble – black paper, distilled water, overhead projector, scissors, black electrical tape and hair driers galore. I asked the students to cut black squares for themselves to act as backgrounds for their holograms to protect the emulsion.

This was an invaluable experience for the holography workshops with students next week on the last day of the conference. As I do holography workshops on my own, I need a supporting activity for the holograms - one which a teacher can help younger students with in an adjacent room while they wait for the holograms to be completed…..any ideas gratefully received!

Six days to symposium!

2006-07-02T14:17:00.000Z

So exciting! Six days to go 'til Dr James Gates and I head for Wales and the holography symposium. We'll be giving Martin Richardson and Jonathan Ross a hand as they put the finishing touches on the holog exhbition at the Castle.

I will be covering the arty and social side of the conference in this blog (thank you Chindu) and Gates - who is a nanotechnology specialist at the University of Southampton - will be covering the science. James has recently been lured into the dark world of holography - with the use of shiny things - and he I have been teaching holography to young Engineers and Scientists at the University. We will be giving a paper on our problem-based-learning holography project on Day One of the conference.

I will also be giving a paper on fine artists' use of text in holography - and will be doing two holography workshops with students from local schools on the last day.

To those of you who can't be here - you'll be missed! Please keep in touch and we'll keep you informed.