Flamsteed Astronomy Society

Professor Ian Crawford Professor Ian Crawford is Professor of Planetary Science and Astrobiology at Birkbeck College, University of London. Since 2003, Ian shifted the balance of his research activities away from observational astronomy and into planetary science, focussing especially on the Moon. Ian was co-investigator on the D-CIXS instrument (Demonstration of a Compact Imaging X-Ray Spectrometer), which orbited the Moon on ESA’s SMART1 spacecraft between 2004 and 2006, and chaired the Science Team for the Chandrayaan-1 X-Ray spectrometer (C1XS), on…

Dr Daniel Mortlock Quasars - really the thermal glow from ultra-hot gas falling into a super-massive black hole at the centres of an otherwise ordinary galaxy - are amongst the brightest astronomical objects known, and so can be seen to great distances of billions of light years. The finite speed of light means that the most distant currently known quasars are also seen as they were when the Universe was about 5% of its current age (i.e., less than a…

Professor Jon Butterworth Jon Butterworth is a physics professor at University College London. He is a member of the UCL High Energy Physics group and works on the Atlas experiment at Cern's Large Hadron Collider. His research investigates what nature is like at the smallest distances and the highest energies - the fundamental physical laws. This tells us about the physics which was most important in the first few moments after the big bang.

Professor Andrew Fabian Professor Andrew Fabian OBE FRS is the Director of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. He also leads the X-Ray research group within the Institute. The group's research focuses on active galaxies, clusters of galaxies, elliptical galaxies, galactic black holes, neutron stars and the X-ray background. He is one of two UK members on ESA's Athena Science Study Team and Chair of the Science Advisory Committee for the Japanese mission ASTRO-H. Before becoming its…

Dr Andrew Pontzen Dr Andrew Pontzen is a lecturer and Royal Society University Research Fellow at University College London. Previously he has held fellowships at Oxford Astrophysics (Balliol College/Oxford Martin School) and at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology in Cambridge as an Emmanuel College research fellow. His research, which won the 2016 RAS Fowler Award, covers a range of topics in galaxy formation and computational cosmology, also touching on some early-Universe physics.

Professor Tim O'Brien Tim O'Brien is professor of Astrophysics at The University of Manchester and Associate Director of Jodrell Bank Observatory. Tim's main research involves trying to understand novae, a particular type of exploding star.

Professor Giovanna Tinetti Professor Giovanna Tinetti is professor of Physics and Astronomy at University College London. Awarded a PhD in Theoretical Physics from University of Turin, she has since coordinated at UCL a team on exoplanets since 2007. Royal Society University Research Fellow 2009-present. ESA external fellow 2005-2007, NASA Astrobiology Institute/NRC fellow at Caltech/JPL 2001-2005.