Dr Judith Croston

This proposal will fund astronomy researchers at The Open University. We will study the very most distant known objects, using a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. This is a feature of general relativity which is very useful for our purposes: the warping of space-time by large masses at intermediate distances can magnify the images of objects right at the edge of the observable Universe, making them more visible. We are using a powerful collection of 66 radio telescopes in Chile - called ALMA - to study water in galaxies at redshifts between 2 and 5. By doing this we will learn about the formation of stars throughout the history of the Universe. This will give us new understanding of how the very biggest galaxies which we see in the present-day Universe formed. We are using another array of radio telescopes based in Europe called LOFAR to learn about jets of energetic particles which are accelerated out from the centre of galaxies. These jets are very long - longer than the size of a whole galaxy - and narrow structures which emit radio waves. LOFAR is extremely sensitive and is detecting jets which previous telescopes couldn't see. This is changing some of our understanding of what causes jets to have particular shapes and brightness patterns. Using a new European space telescope called Euclid we are going to study giant clumps of stars forming in distance galaxies. There will be huge numbers of images to look at, so we are going to use citizen science to generate a large number of identifications of what we are looking for. Then we will train artificial intelligence - i.e. computers working without supervision - to find all the similar examples. We will find examples of small rocky planets - roughly Earth-sized - orbiting stars in the Sun's local part of our Galaxy. The ones we are looking for are hot, in some cases so hot that their rocky surfaces are molten or turned into gas which escapes. These particular planets are useful because we can use the starlight filtered through the escaping gas to measure the chemical composition of their rocky surfaces. We will study ices - normal frozen water as well as ices made from carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and ethanol - in the laboratory and with the James Webb Space Telescope. This will reveal the role ice plays in sticking grains together in the early stages of planet formation. Without this grains would bounce apart instead of growing to produce pebbles, and planets like the Earth would not be able to form.

Astronomy Consolidated Grant

The Athena X-ray observatory is the European Space Agency's next large-class mission, advancing our understanding of the hot and energetic regions of the Universe. This project supports the PI's science advisory role to ESA as part of the Athena Science Study Team.

STFC Open 2018 DTP

It is now well established that jets from active galactic nuclei play an important role in the evolution of massive galaxies; however, studies of jet populations and their impact at high redshifts have so far been limited to the most extreme objects. New radio surveys are about to change this, by establishing the demographics of low and intermediate luminosity jets out to the epochs where star formation and quasar activity peak, and where galaxy groups and clusters are forming. The proposed project will build on our recent, STFC-funded work to address key questions about the inter-relationship between radio observables, large-scale environment and particle content, which are crucial to exploiting LOFAR and eventually Square Kilometre Array surveys of black-hole evolution.

This grant funds a postdoctoral research associate to investigate the physics and energetic impact of radio-loud active galaxies, using new datasets from the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) together with other multi-wavelength observations. Jet energy injection is a crucial process in the evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters, and this project aims to improve our understanding of the role of jets in the Universe.

Royal Astronomical Society Undergraduate Research Bursary