APEX returns this Friday with Dr Will Dunn: The next era of X-ray imagers and the Orbyts programme

We are delighted to resume our APEX seminar series this academic year with a talk from Dr Will Dunn, a Senior Research Fellow in the Astrophysics group at UCL's Department of Physics and Astronomy. This will be a hybrid event, held at Birkbeck and online.

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APEX returns this Friday with Dr Will Dunn: The next era of X-ray imagers and the Orbyts programme

18 Oct 2024, 13:00 – 14:00

Room 612
Malet Street
London
WC1E 7HX
United Kingdom

Our Astrobiology and Planetary Exploration (APEX) seminar series returns this Friday 18th October at 13:00 GMT, featuring the following talks:

Will Dunn (UCL P&A): X-ray Imagers for APEX Science and Orbyts Research-With-Schools Projects from the APEX Community

Abstracts for Will’s talks can be found below.

Please note the day and location for APEX this term: Fridays at lunchtime, 1-2 pm GMT, in room 612 in Birkbeck’s main building on Malet Street.

A hybrid (in-person and online) format will continue this term but, of course, we warmly encourage in-person attendance to support our visiting speakers.

Details of the forthcoming APEX programme can be found at the link below. The latest information will be advertised in advance of each meeting. If you are not on our regular mailing lists and are interested in attending these seminars, please contact joanna.fabbri AT ucl.ac.uk.

Talk abstracts

X-ray Imagers for APEX Science

A golden age of lightweight X-ray imagers is upon us. This era will begin next year with the launch of the ESA-CAS SMILE spacecraft to observe Earth’s relation to space weather and with ESA-JAXA’s BepiColombo arriving at Mercury to probe the formation and evolution of the surface through X-ray maps of the elemental composition. Following this, India seek to send an X-ray instrument to characterise the loss of Mars’s atmosphere, while China’s Tianwen-4 flagship (and possibly NASA’s COMPASS – if selected) will fly to Jupiter and use X-ray imaging to connect elemental maps of the surface composition of the icy moons to their geological features. Such instrumentation would also be available and valuable for an Enceladus Orbi-lander and the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (the top 2 ranked flagships for NASA’s next decade of planetary science and key within the ESA planetary science agenda).

Here, I’ll review the science offered by X-ray imagers at planets and try to provide a forward-looking overview of how this new generation of instrumentation might shape our understanding of the composition, formation, evolution and habitability of planetary bodies over the coming decades.

Orbyts Research-With-Schools Projects from the APEX Community

Teachers D. Fleming and W. Whyatt respectively say:

“This project has surpassed anything I could have possibly imagined - not only have our students been consistently blown away by the science of other planets, it has helped them better understand the value of their own one. Orbyts is definitely one of the coolest things I’ve been exposed to in my 15 year career.”

“It’s clear to me that the Orbyts project has been the most successful project we have been fortunate to work with and its importance cannot be overstated.”

So what is Orbyts, how is it having such a profound impact on school students and what makes teachers think it’s quite so cool?

Orbyts is a movement organised by UCL and Birkbeck researchers that creates partnerships between scientists and schools. This provides school students with relatable science role models while empowering through their own original space research projects. The structure of regular interventions, inspirational role models and active ownership of scientific research is proving to be transformative; dispelling harmful stereotypes and profoundly shifting perceptions of science and scientists. It is shown to be particularly impactful for groups historically excluded from science. For example, our partner schools report 100% increases in girls uptake of A-level physics, following participation in an Orbyts project at GCSE. Given that Osbyts builds a symbiosis between research and schools, since 2018, it has enabled 300+ UK state school students to author publications (10s of planetary papers) - most of these student-authors are pupil premium and/or widening participation students.

Our fantastic APEX community researchers have partnered with school students to support research-with-schools projects on: exoplanets, aurorae, AI and machine learning, magnetospheres, Mars geology and habitability, comets, space weather, planet formation and X-ray observations of planets. In this presentation, we will highlight some of the impacts and showcase a whistle-stop tour through a couple of these projects. We very much welcome involvement in Orbyts by anyone interested. A link to the Orbyts Impact Report can be found below.

APEX Seminars

The Astrobiology and Planetary Exploration (APEX) seminar series takes place this term on Friday lunchtimes, from 1-2pm, in room 612 in Birkbeck’s main building on Malet St. As in previous years, we will operate a hybrid (online and in-person) model for both speakers and attendees. Details of the forthcoming APEX programme can be found via the link below.