Astronomy at the Open University 2017-2020
Lead Research Organisation:
The Open University
Department Name: Faculty of Sci, Tech, Eng & Maths (STEM)
Abstract
Our research programme, Astronomy at the Open University, covers the breadth of cosmic evolution, from dark energy to the birth of planets. We do this research by observation, laboratory experiments, simulations and modelling. We use purpose-designed laboratories and instruments, and instruments on telescopes and spacecraft to make our observations and measurements. Our group is based in the Department of Physical Sciences at the OU.
So what are we trying to find out? We have 8 separate projects, from exoplanets and stars to distant galaxies. We already know a lot about how the Solar System came about. The Sun and planets formed from a cloud of dust and gas about 4570 million years ago. The cloud collapsed to a spinning disk and dust and gas spiralled inwards. The core of the disk became hot, forming the Sun, while the leftover dust and gas formed the planets. Boulders gravitated together to make planets, but no-one knows how the dust grains became boulders. We are experimenting with colliding centimetre-sized particles in zero-gravity conditions to see if they stick together, to find the missing link in how planets form. We also look at processes that cause stars to change as they age. Only recently has it been recognised that so many stars are binary systems, where two or more stars are in close association and affect each others' motion. Such systems affect the way mass and energy is lost from a star, and how they are transferred into the interstellar medium. We will study how 'binarity' affects the behaviour of massive stars (>20 times the mass of the Sun) and low mass stars (< the mass of the Sun), and how star populations change as they age. Studying these effects is vital, because the environment of a star influences any planets that surround it. Many hundreds of planets have been discovered around other stars (exoplanets) and we are working to describe the range of properties of these planets, especially when they are located close to their central star. A star can even completely destroy a close-in exoplanet, which could be an important new source of dust in the nearby universe and even in distant galaxies in the early Universe. Also in the early Universe, we can use the way that galaxies warp space and time to learn about the dark matter that surrounds them, and the dark energy that drives them apart.
What else do we do? We build and test instruments for ground-based telescopes and for space missions, striving to make them smaller and lighter, and explore how they can be used on Earth for medical or security purposes. One of the most important benefits of our research is that it helps to train and inspire students: the next generation of scientists and engineers. We also enjoy telling as many people as possible about our work, and what we have learned from it about our origins.
So what are we trying to find out? We have 8 separate projects, from exoplanets and stars to distant galaxies. We already know a lot about how the Solar System came about. The Sun and planets formed from a cloud of dust and gas about 4570 million years ago. The cloud collapsed to a spinning disk and dust and gas spiralled inwards. The core of the disk became hot, forming the Sun, while the leftover dust and gas formed the planets. Boulders gravitated together to make planets, but no-one knows how the dust grains became boulders. We are experimenting with colliding centimetre-sized particles in zero-gravity conditions to see if they stick together, to find the missing link in how planets form. We also look at processes that cause stars to change as they age. Only recently has it been recognised that so many stars are binary systems, where two or more stars are in close association and affect each others' motion. Such systems affect the way mass and energy is lost from a star, and how they are transferred into the interstellar medium. We will study how 'binarity' affects the behaviour of massive stars (>20 times the mass of the Sun) and low mass stars (< the mass of the Sun), and how star populations change as they age. Studying these effects is vital, because the environment of a star influences any planets that surround it. Many hundreds of planets have been discovered around other stars (exoplanets) and we are working to describe the range of properties of these planets, especially when they are located close to their central star. A star can even completely destroy a close-in exoplanet, which could be an important new source of dust in the nearby universe and even in distant galaxies in the early Universe. Also in the early Universe, we can use the way that galaxies warp space and time to learn about the dark matter that surrounds them, and the dark energy that drives them apart.
What else do we do? We build and test instruments for ground-based telescopes and for space missions, striving to make them smaller and lighter, and explore how they can be used on Earth for medical or security purposes. One of the most important benefits of our research is that it helps to train and inspire students: the next generation of scientists and engineers. We also enjoy telling as many people as possible about our work, and what we have learned from it about our origins.
Planned Impact
Please see Appendix F for further details.
KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE -
BENEFICIARIES: Our key external, industrial and commercial partners in this project are e2v, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the LSST Corporation, ESA, Astronomy Tuition, the Wolfson Trust, the BBC and FutureLearn.
BENEFITS:
Our long-established collaboration with UK-based imaging specialist e2v has enabled the company to grow its business in international space missions and increase competitiveness. We have helped develop e2v's understanding of the processes at work in imaging sensors, and improved image sensor designs and test methodologies. The current proposal will allow us to extend e2v's competitiveness in imaging through characterisation of the brighter-fatter effect in CCDs. We have previously studied space radiation damage on the e2v sensors, trained more than 30 engineers in testing of e2v products, and were instrumental in the company's successful £3.8m Regional Growth Fund award in 2012 - funding that has created around 100 jobs. Our project also involves collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory and the LSST Corporation, for whom our detector characterisation in this project (in both cases building on our ongoing work) will be valuable for LSST primary science goals and for detector physics.
Our microgravity research programme already has a UKSA-funded outreach programme, with UK astronaut Major Tim Peake planning to tweet our public engagement videos from the ISS (see below) since it fulfils the ELIPS and ISS public engagement objectives of ESA; our research programme will provide further opportunities for new online content. Together with our existing content, this will be promoted through our BBC partnership (described below). We will actively seek opportunities to highlight all research in this grant through our unique OU-BBC media partnership (see below), and our commercial arm OU Worldwide sells a portfolio of our internally-funded BBC programmes to both commercial and public service TV networks globally.
The in-house robotic telescopes used in this proposal (PIRATE, the Bradford Robotic Telescope) are also used in our distance education, and PIRATE has been used as a hands-on exemplar by the independent company Astronomy Tuition, who run hands-on residential school astronomy for OU students and other students. Our research in this grant will enable our external teaching partners to provide students with science applications of small telescopes with the telescopes used on hand. PIRATE is also run remotely through the Wolfson Trust and Open University's joint educational initiative, the Open Science Laboratory, which will benefit directly from the exemplar science applications in this proposal, and may involve public and/or student use of our robotic telescope for follow-ups of targets of interest from this proposal.
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT -
BENEFICIARIES: Our audiences are (a) the science-inclined general public (b) new public audiences who have previously only had limited engagement with STEM (c) teachers of science at school and college level (d) young people, e.g. ages 10-14 (e) older influencers of young people, such as parents, family, and group leaders. The audience demographics of each broadcast project depend on the channel (e.g. BBC1, BBC2, BBC4, Channel 4) and the slot (i.e. the day and time of transmission).
BENEFITS:
The OU is a world leader in science public engagement. OU Astronomy research features prominently in the OU's public engagement. The OU has had a Partnership with the BBC for over 40 years and co-produces up to 25 peak time TV and radio series a year and from January 2011 commissions co-productions with other broadcasters e.g. Channel 4. The OU is also one of the leading worldwide providers of free online educational resources. The Open University founded FutureLearn, the UK's MOOC provider. We are responsible for the Education and Public Outreach for PLATO2.0 & ASTERICS, highlighting our research.
KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE -
BENEFICIARIES: Our key external, industrial and commercial partners in this project are e2v, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the LSST Corporation, ESA, Astronomy Tuition, the Wolfson Trust, the BBC and FutureLearn.
BENEFITS:
Our long-established collaboration with UK-based imaging specialist e2v has enabled the company to grow its business in international space missions and increase competitiveness. We have helped develop e2v's understanding of the processes at work in imaging sensors, and improved image sensor designs and test methodologies. The current proposal will allow us to extend e2v's competitiveness in imaging through characterisation of the brighter-fatter effect in CCDs. We have previously studied space radiation damage on the e2v sensors, trained more than 30 engineers in testing of e2v products, and were instrumental in the company's successful £3.8m Regional Growth Fund award in 2012 - funding that has created around 100 jobs. Our project also involves collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory and the LSST Corporation, for whom our detector characterisation in this project (in both cases building on our ongoing work) will be valuable for LSST primary science goals and for detector physics.
Our microgravity research programme already has a UKSA-funded outreach programme, with UK astronaut Major Tim Peake planning to tweet our public engagement videos from the ISS (see below) since it fulfils the ELIPS and ISS public engagement objectives of ESA; our research programme will provide further opportunities for new online content. Together with our existing content, this will be promoted through our BBC partnership (described below). We will actively seek opportunities to highlight all research in this grant through our unique OU-BBC media partnership (see below), and our commercial arm OU Worldwide sells a portfolio of our internally-funded BBC programmes to both commercial and public service TV networks globally.
The in-house robotic telescopes used in this proposal (PIRATE, the Bradford Robotic Telescope) are also used in our distance education, and PIRATE has been used as a hands-on exemplar by the independent company Astronomy Tuition, who run hands-on residential school astronomy for OU students and other students. Our research in this grant will enable our external teaching partners to provide students with science applications of small telescopes with the telescopes used on hand. PIRATE is also run remotely through the Wolfson Trust and Open University's joint educational initiative, the Open Science Laboratory, which will benefit directly from the exemplar science applications in this proposal, and may involve public and/or student use of our robotic telescope for follow-ups of targets of interest from this proposal.
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT -
BENEFICIARIES: Our audiences are (a) the science-inclined general public (b) new public audiences who have previously only had limited engagement with STEM (c) teachers of science at school and college level (d) young people, e.g. ages 10-14 (e) older influencers of young people, such as parents, family, and group leaders. The audience demographics of each broadcast project depend on the channel (e.g. BBC1, BBC2, BBC4, Channel 4) and the slot (i.e. the day and time of transmission).
BENEFITS:
The OU is a world leader in science public engagement. OU Astronomy research features prominently in the OU's public engagement. The OU has had a Partnership with the BBC for over 40 years and co-produces up to 25 peak time TV and radio series a year and from January 2011 commissions co-productions with other broadcasters e.g. Channel 4. The OU is also one of the leading worldwide providers of free online educational resources. The Open University founded FutureLearn, the UK's MOOC provider. We are responsible for the Education and Public Outreach for PLATO2.0 & ASTERICS, highlighting our research.
Organisations
Publications
Hagimoto M
(2023)
Bright extragalactic ALMA redshift survey (BEARS) III: detailed study of emission lines from 71 Herschel targets
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lohr M
(2018)
New Cepheid variables in the young open clusters Berkeley 51 and Berkeley 55
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Davidge H
(2017)
AKARI/IRC source catalogues and source counts for the IRAC Dark Field, ELAIS North and the AKARI Deep Field South
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Barnes J
(2017)
Surprisingly different star-spot distributions on the near equal-mass equal-rotation-rate stars in the M dwarf binary GJ 65 AB
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Berdiñas Z
(2017)
High-cadence spectroscopy of M-dwarfs - II. Searching for stellar pulsations with HARPS
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lukic V
(2019)
Morphological classification of radio galaxies: capsule networks versus convolutional neural networks
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Barnes J
(2017)
Recovering planet radial velocity signals in the presence of starspot activity in fully convective stars
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Nettke W
(2017)
The SCUBA-2 Ambitious Sky Survey: a catalogue of beam-sized sources in the Galactic longitude range 120°-140°
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Dickinson H
(2022)
Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout - Design and first application of a two-dimensional aggregation tool for citizen science
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lauritsen L
(2021)
Superresolving Herschel imaging: a proof of concept using Deep Neural Networks
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Bendo G
(2023)
The bright extragalactic ALMA redshift survey (BEARS) - II. Millimetre photometry of gravitational lens candidates
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Amvrosiadis A.
(2018)
ALMA observations of lensed Herschel sources : Testing the dark-matter halo paradigm
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Mooney S
(2019)
Revisiting the Fanaroff-Riley dichotomy and radio-galaxy morphology with the LOFAR Two-Metre Sky Survey (LoTSS)
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Bartlett E
(2017)
SXP 7.92: A Recently Rediscovered Be/X-ray Binary in the Small Magellanic Cloud, Viewed Edge On
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Jenkins J
(2017)
New planetary systems from the Calan-Hertfordshire Extrasolar Planet Search
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Anglada-Escudé G
(2020)
RedDots: a temperate 1.5 Earth-mass planet candidate in a compact multiterrestrial planet system around GJ 1061
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Huang T
(2021)
Optically detected galaxy cluster candidates in the AKARI North Ecliptic Pole field based on photometric redshift from the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Borsato E
(2024)
Characterization of Herschel -selected strong lens candidates through HST and sub-mm/mm observations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Thomson A
(2019)
Through thick or thin: multiple components of the magneto-ionic medium towards the nearby H ii region Sharpless 2-27 revealed by Faraday tomography
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Wittenmyer R
(2019)
Truly eccentric - II. When can two circular planets mimic a single eccentric orbit?
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Urquhart S
(2022)
The bright extragalactic ALMA redshift survey (BEARS) I: redshifts of bright gravitationally lensed galaxies from the Herschel ATLAS
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Eden D
(2019)
SCOPE: SCUBA-2 Continuum Observations of Pre-protostellar Evolution - survey description and compact source catalogue
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Wilde J
(2022)
Detecting gravitational lenses using machine learning: exploring interpretability and sensitivity to rare lensing configurations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Vernardos G
(2019)
Spectroscopic confirmation and modelling of two lensed quadruple quasars in the Dark Energy Survey public footprint
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Holland W
(2017)
SONS: The JCMT legacy survey of debris discs in the submillimetre
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Williams W
(2019)
NGC 326: X-shaped no more
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Andrews H
(2018)
Asymmetric ejecta of cool supergiants and hypergiants in the massive cluster Westerlund 1
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Jeffers S
(2017)
The relation between stellar magnetic field geometry and chromospheric activity cycles - I. The highly variable field of e Eridani at activity minimum
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Ribas I
(2018)
A candidate super-Earth planet orbiting near the snow line of Barnard's star.
in Nature
Zavala J
(2017)
A dusty star-forming galaxy at z = 6 revealed by strong gravitational lensing
in Nature Astronomy
Staab D
(2019)
A compact multi-planet system around a bright nearby star from the Dispersed Matter Planet Project
in Nature Astronomy
Haswell C
(2019)
Dispersed Matter Planet Project discoveries of ablating planets orbiting nearby bright stars
in Nature Astronomy
Barnes J
(2019)
An ablating 2.6 M? planet in an eccentric binary from the Dispersed Matter Planet Project
in Nature Astronomy
Clark S
(2019)
Indirect detection of the partial p wave via the s wave in the annihilation cross section of dark matter
in Physical Review D
Gruppioni C
(2017)
Tracing the Evolution of Dust Obscured Star Formation and Accretion Back to the Reionisation Epoch with SPICA
in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
Egami E
(2018)
Probing the high-redshift universe with SPICA: Toward the epoch of reionisation and beyond
in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
Spinoglio L
(2017)
Galaxy Evolution Studies with the SPace IR Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics ( SPICA ): The Power of IR Spectroscopy
in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
Mackay C
(2018)
GravityCam: Wide-field high-resolution high-cadence imaging surveys in the visible from the ground
in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
Burgarella D
(2019)
AKARI NEP field: Point source catalogs from GALEX and Herschel observations and selection of candidate lensed sub-millimeter galaxies
in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan
Pearson C
(2018)
The Herschel-PACS North Ecliptic Pole Survey
in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan
Serjeant S
(2019)
How Far Can We Push Deconvolution? A SCUBA-2 Test Case
in Research Notes of the AAS
Alfen N
(2018)
Photometric Benchmarks of Bright Blazars in the Northern Hemisphere
in Research Notes of the AAS
Kasliwal MM
(2017)
Illuminating gravitational waves: A concordant picture of photons from a neutron star merger.
in Science (New York, N.Y.)
Jeffers SV
(2020)
A multiplanet system of super-Earths orbiting the brightest red dwarf star GJ 887.
in Science (New York, N.Y.)
Fossati L
(2018)
Suppressed Far-UV Stellar Activity and Low Planetary Mass Loss in the WASP-18 System*
in The Astronomical Journal
Cubillos P
(2020)
Near-ultraviolet Transmission Spectroscopy of HD 209458b: Evidence of Ionized Iron Beyond the Planetary Roche Lobe
in The Astronomical Journal
Wittenmyer R
(2018)
The K2-HERMES Survey. I. Planet-candidate Properties from K2 Campaigns 1-3
in The Astronomical Journal
Wittenmyer R
(2017)
The Pan-Pacific Planet Search. VII. The Most Eccentric Planet Orbiting a Giant Star
in The Astronomical Journal
Lesser R
(2019)
Photometric Redshifts of Emission-line Galaxies Using Ramp Filters
in The Astronomical Journal
Feng F
(2017)
Color Difference Makes a Difference: Four Planet Candidates around t Ceti
in The Astronomical Journal