Annual Report 2009.pdf - School of Physics - University of Melbourne

group reports & publicationsAstrophysicsProf Rachel WebsterThe Astrophysics group celebrated an outstandingyear in all respects in 2009. It was the InternationalYear of Astronomy, celebrating 400 years sincethe manufacture of the telescope by Galileo, andhis subsequent observations of the solar system.The group was involved in a range of outreachactivities to celebrate this event: five outstandingJuly lectures were organized by Jeremy Mould,including Reinhardt Genzel, Brian Boyle, MichaelBrown, Jeremy Mould and David Jamieson. StuartWyithe organized a screening of the Swinburnemovie ‘Bigger than Big’ at the Natimuk Frinj withover 500 attendees, and Rachel Webster andAndrew Melatos delivered a number of public talksto different community and professional groups.Group members were particularly successful withrecognition from both outside the University andwithin. Jeremy Mould was awarded the GruberPrize for Cosmology at the IAU General Assemblyin Rio de Janerio. Stuart Wyithe was awarded thePawsey Prize of the Australian Academy of Science,Andrew Melatos received the Dean’s ResearchAward and Rachel Webster received the UniversityAward for Research Higher Degree Supervision. Inaddition, Stuart Wyithe was promoted to professor.The group was not less active in organizingmeetings: Stuart Wyithe organized the AGM of theAstronomical Society of Australia, with over 230attendees. He was ably assisted by all members ofthe group. Andrew Melatos organised a half-daysession on gravitational wave sources at the 12thMarcel Grossmann Meeting. In addition, Andrewgave six invited talks at international conferences,including at the 58th Fujihara Seminar (to informJapanese governmental agencies on the scientificimpact of building a GW detector in Japan) and the4th International Sakharov Conference on Physics.rules out a range of cosmological equationsof state and certain classes of string theorymodels for the fundamental forces of nature.• Matthias Vigelius and Andrew Melatos publishedthe most sophisticated models of magneticmountains to date, including new effects likeresistive relaxation. The updated predictions ofsignal strength confirm that they are promisingsource candidates for Advanced LIGO.• Sally Langford and Stuart Wyithe publishedtheir results on earthshine, and the story wasfeatured by Catalyst, the Australian HigherEducation Supplement and other publications.• 4. The MWA project, which includes RachelWebster and Stuart Wyithe, successfully builtthe first 32 tiles of their new telescope atBoolardy in WA, and fully tested the array.The group members published 32 refereedpublications during the year, mostly in A and A*journals. The group graduated two new PhDs – NickBate and Sally Langford and Stephen Petrie finishedan MSc and has started a PhD in population health.The group welcomed new postdoctoral fellowsJamie Bolton and David Floyd and bid farewell toStewart Gleadow.Andrew Melatos was accepted as a member of theLIGO collaboration and is making a significant impactwithin that group. Some other notable scientificachievements during the year included:• LIGO placed the best upper limit to date on theamplitude of the stochastic GW background inthe Universe. The result, published in Nature,www.physics.unimelb.edu.au 27