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Category: research

New papers on the ARCUS mission ?>

New papers on the ARCUS mission

Arcus is a NASA/MIDEX mission under development in response to the anticipated 2016 call for proposals. It is a freeflying, soft X-ray grating spectrometer with the highest-ever spectral resolution in the 8-51 Å (0.24 – 1.55 keV) energy range. The Arcus bandpass includes the most sensitive tracers of diffuse million-degree gas: spectral lines from O VII and O VIII, H- and He-like lines of C, N, Ne and Mg, and unique density- and temperature-sensitive lines from Si and Fe ions….

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New paper on the disappearing disk of TYC 8241 2652 1 ?>

New paper on the disappearing disk of TYC 8241 2652 1

TYC 8241 2652 1 is a young star that showed a strong mid-infrared (mid-IR, 8-25 mu) excess in all observations before 2008 consistent with a dusty disk. Between 2008 and 2010 the mid-IR luminosity of this system dropped dramatically by at least a factor of 30 suggesting a loss of dust mass of an order of magnitude or more. We aim to constrain possible models including removal of disk material by stellar activity processes, the presence of a binary companion,…

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Exoplanets conference in Bonn ?>

Exoplanets conference in Bonn

This week I am in Bonn, Germany, to give an invited talk entitled “Interactions between exoplanets and their host stars” at the conference Exoplanets – Bridging the gap between theory and observations. The conference takes place at the beautiful historical Physikzentrum in Bad Honnef. Lots of interesting talks and posters, from planet definitions (and how we should change them) to upcoming observational missions and planet formation theory. Plenty of time for discussion with all participants!

New paper on geodynamo simulations ?>

New paper on geodynamo simulations

Earth sustains its magnetic field by a dynamo process driven by convection in the liquid outer core. Geodynamo simulations have been successful in reproducing many observed properties of the geomagnetic field. However, while theoretical considerations suggest that flow in the core is governed by a balance between Lorentz force, rotational force and buoyancy (called MAC balance for Magnetic, Archimedean, Coriolis) with only minute roles for viscous and inertial forces, dynamo simulations must employ viscosity values that are many orders of…

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Cool Stars 19 conference review ?>

Cool Stars 19 conference review

One of my favourite conferences, the Cool Stars Workshop, took place in Uppsala last week. My PhD student Rachel Booth presented her work in a talk at the splinter session on Stellar Magnetic Activity – her first talk at a conference! And she did great! A lot of interesting stuff is going on at the moment with the spin-down and decrease in magnetic activity of old cool stars, and it seems like there may be different trends of rotation with…

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Otto-Hahn-Medal awarded to Rakesh Yadav ?>

Otto-Hahn-Medal awarded to Rakesh Yadav

Great news: my former postdoc and ongoing collaborator Dr. Rakesh Yadav was awarded the Otto-Hahn-Medal of the Max Planck Society. This is a prize the Max Planck Society awards to young scientists for outstanding achievements. Rakesh works on theoretical models of stellar and (exo-)planetary magnetic fields, with a focus on the magnetic dynamo processes in quickly rotating objects. Here’s the link to the press release. Congratulations to Rakesh!

XMM-Newton: The Next Decade workshop ?>

XMM-Newton: The Next Decade workshop

This week the XMM-Newton workshop is taking place in Madrid. XMM is still going strong 17 years after its launch to space! Although I couldn’t attend the meeting myself, some of my group’s work got showcased in the invited talks, specifically Jürgen Schmitt’s talk on “Exoplanets and their Host Stars”, where some of my tidal spin-up work was shown, and Beate Stelzer’s talk on “Cool Star X-ray Variability”, where the work of my PhD student Rachel Booth on age-activity relationships…

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Mission concept: X-ray Surveyor ?>

Mission concept: X-ray Surveyor

The X-ray Vision Workshop was held in DC in October last year, where a large group of astronomers including myself met to discuss the scientific potential of a new X-ray space telescope concept, The X-ray Surveyor. As part of the workshop we held a 2-hour brainstorming session on what kind of new scientific insights could come from this mission, and the results are now available in this publication: Allured et al. 2015, “X-ray Surveyor Discussion Session Results from the X-ray…

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UKEXOM conference ?>

UKEXOM conference

I attended the UKEXOM (UK exoplanet community meeting) in Exeter this week. Very interesting conference, and I finally got to know all the exoplanet people here on this side of the pond. A pretty big group from our University attended (8 people, not bad for our small but growing exoplanet group), including my PhD student Rachel Booth, for whom it was the first academic conference ever. She presented a poster about her work on improved stellar ages from activity measurements,…

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Research visit: Edinburgh and St. Andrews ?>

Research visit: Edinburgh and St. Andrews

I’m on a research visit to Scotland this week. I’m giving the lunch talk at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh and the exoplanet seminar talk at the University of St. Andrews. Talk title and abstract: “Understanding exoplanets and their stellar environment” Exoplanets do not exist in a vacuum, they are embedded into the environment created by their host stars, which means that they are affected by radiation fields, stellar winds, and magnetic phenomena. Since we aim to understand how exoplanets…

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