UNews - Cardiff ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ

U of L’s space imaging group scores success on two fronts

caroline.zentner — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 16:52:47 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge’s Astronomical Instrumentation Group (AIG) is celebrating two recent victories, one technical and one personal.

From left to right are Dr. Ir. Willem Jellema, senior instrument scientist with SRON; Trevor Fulton, U of L software modeller; Dr. David Naylor, U of L physics professor; Carolien Feenstra, grad student at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Groningen; Ian Veenendaal, U of L doctoral student; Adam Christiansen, U of L grad student, and Rebecca Sirota, U of L electronics technician.

When Ian Veenendaal, a doctoral student studying under physics professor Dr. David Naylor, first started collaborating with the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON) and Cardiff ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ on a Fabry-Pérot etalon (an instrument that measures the wavelengths of light) two years ago, he didn’t imagine it would one day lead to a job offer. As soon as he finishes his PhD thesis, which he expects will be sometime next summer, he’ll become an instrument scientist with SRON.

“It’s like a dream come true,” he says. “My goal since I started in physics was to work with some space agency and it came through.”

Veenendaal was collaborating with SRON on the design of the Fabry-Pérot etalon, which was designed, produced and tested by SRON before being brought to the U of L for testing in the cryogenic testing facility during the last week of November. The etalon had to be cooled to 4 Kelvin and then tested to see if it would operate in such cold temperatures. Turning an instrument on for the first time is called seeing first light and, in this case, the instrument performed exactly as it should.

“There’s nothing like it,” says Veenendaal. “When you see that first little spike in the signal that you expected to see, that your math and computer models tell you should be there, it’s confirmation that the hundreds of pieces of the puzzle fit together properly. There’s both a sense of accomplishment and relief.”

The etalon was accompanied by Dr. Ir. Willem Jellema, a senior instrument scientist and project lead with SRON and assistant professor at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Groningen. He was accompanied by Carolien Feenstra, a master’s student at the university, who started working on the project as an undergraduate.

“It’s the equivalent of a tuning fork, an optical tuning fork,” says Jellema. “The device we built filters out one specific colour of light and rejects all the other ones. That way, by tilting it, we can actually tune selected different colours of light and analyze them at very high fidelity.”

“It’s been a great week,” says Dr. David Naylor, a U of L physics professor. “There’s an army of talented people behind this. It’s been a fantastic collaboration, all funded on our part by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). It’s a really important first. No one has made this kind of etalon before.”

The etalon is roughly five centimetres in diameter and so precisely flat that, if it was expanded to the size of Henderson Lake, the surface from one end to the other would not deviate by more than half a centimetre.

“That was key to the success,” says Jellema. “We had to etch and polish multiple layers of essentially solar-panel material to perfection and there is actually no one who can easily do this. It’s state-of-the-art processing capability at SRON and the NOVA optical infrared group, and maybe even in the world. That’s the expertise we could bring into this project.”

Funding for the collaboration was provided by a CSA Flights and Fieldwork for the Advancement of Science and Technology (FAST) grant and through SPICA-Safari funding from SRON and a Leids Kerkhoven-Bosscha Fonds (LKBF) subsidy from the Leiden Observatory. A member of the FAST collaboration, Professor Peter Ade from the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, provided critical band limiting cryogenic filters.

The device has been a stepping stone to building an even better device that could very well be included in a NASA space mission in the future. It could also eventually fly in the SPICA mission as a calibration source component or as part of a high-altitude balloon project by CNES, the French space agency, above Australia and Canada.

SPIRE earns international award

trevor.kenney — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 22:20:47 +0000

A ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge physics research team and a Lethbridge-based high tech data processing company are among the collective group of people behind the Herschel Space Telescope's Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) instrument, which has been awarded the prestigious 2013 Sir Arthur Clarke Award for academic study and research.

The award is in recognition of the scientific achievements of the SPIRE instrument, which was designed, built and operated by an international team of astronomers, scientists and engineers.

SPIRE was co-developed by Dr. David Naylor (physics and astronomy) and a team of researchers who led Canada's contribution to the Herschel project on behalf of the Canadian Space Agency.

Blue Sky Spectroscopy, a Lethbridge-based, high tech company, is one of the three international Data Processing and Science Analysis Software centres for the SPIRE instrument. The mission, launched on May 14, 2009 from the Ariane Spaceport in French Guyana, almost immediately began to shed new light on stars and galaxies by measuring a level of light called far-infrared.

Over a four-year mission period, Herschel -- the largest, most powerful infrared telescope ever flown in space -- made extraordinary discoveries across a wide range of topics, from starburst galaxies in the distant Universe to newly forming planetary systems orbiting nearby young stars. SPIRE is one of three devices attached to the Herschel telescope system.

"SPIRE detects heat and chemical signals that are not visible by optical telescopes, and turns that data into the amazing images and information we and other scientists are using to learn more about the life and death of stars and galaxies," says Naylor.

In addition to literally 'clearing up' the images people have been using for two centuries to look into space, Naylor said the Herschel mission is confirming the existence of molecules on earth that originated in space.

"With SPIRE we can look at the big picture, or the very tiny picture, and gain a whole new insight into how stars live and die. The reason the imagery is so clear is that the space observatory sits more than 1.5 million km from earth, far from our atmosphere, which absorbs virtually all radiation at which far-infrared wavelengths travel. Since the universe emits most of its energy at these wavelengths, Herschel provides us with our first comprehensive view of the universe."

The data and crisp images come from a device about as big as a large microwave oven that took more than 15 years and $100 million to develop – and has to function at a chilly -270C. Herschel operated until the end of its scientific mission on Apr. 29, 2013.

A multi-year data analysis period is now taking place.

The award was collected on behalf of the team by Tanya Lim, of the UK-based STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

"A lot of people from both science and engineering disciplines have dedicated up to 15 years of their lives of making SPIRE a scientific success," says Lim. "It is wonderful that we can all share in this award and we are very grateful for receiving it."

The UK team is led by Naylor's colleague Matt Griffin, of Cardiff ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, Wales.

"Building and operating SPIRE has taken many years of effort by a lot of very talented people in our multi-national team. They are rightly proud of the scientific success of Herschel and SPIRE, and they are delighted to win this award."

The Sir Arthur Clarke awards are presented annually in recognition of notable or outstanding achievements in, or contributions to, all space activities. They are organized by the Arthur C Clarke Foundation and the British Interplanetary Society, and this year were presented during the conference dinner at the UK Space Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

The full list of 2013 winners are available on the British Interplanetary Society website.

This is the second Sir Arthur Clarke Award for the SPIRE team, with Matt Griffin receiving the award for individual achievement in 2010.

Dr. Peter Ade discusses Planck mission

trevor.kenney — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:42:04 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and the Herschel satellite are intimately connected thanks to the work of physics professor Dr. David Naylor and the SPIRE instrument. However, the Herschel launch included a great many scientific instruments, another of which was the Planck mission.

On Thursday, 3 to 4 p.m. in D620, Dr. Peter Ade, from Cardiff ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, Wales will speak about his role with the Planck mission in a free talk open to everyone.

Planck was selected as the third Medium-Sized Mission (M3) of ESA's Horizon 2000 Scientific Programme, and is today part of its Cosmic Vision Programme. It is designed to image the anisotropies of the Cosmic Background Radiation Field over the whole sky, with unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution. Planck will provide a major source of information relevant to several cosmological and astrophysical issues, such as testing theories of the early universe and the origin of cosmic structure. The scientific development of the mission is directed by the Planck Science Team.

Planck was formerly called COBRAS/SAMBA. After the mission was selected and approved (in late 1996), it was renamed in honor of the German scientist Max Planck (1858-1947), Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918.

Planck was launched on May 14, 2009 together with the Herschel satellite. After launch, Planck and Herschel separated and are now proceeding to different orbits around the second Lagrangian point of the Earth-Sun System.

Professor Ade has enjoyed over 30 years experience in instrumental design and manufacture while pursuing his observational astrophysics and atmospheric science interests. His involvement in atmospheric observations started in 1971 when he made some of the first airborne measurements of the submillimetre spectral emission from the atmosphere using helium cooled detector with a Fourier Transform spectrometer.

Cardiff is accepted as the world leader in this technology. Professor Ade has been involved with the development and deployment of many astronomical instruments (Scuba, ISOLWS, Cassini-CIRS, Mars-PMIRR, Boomerang, Maxima, Acbar, Maxipol, Bolocam). Current activities include provision of a second-generation camera for the JCMT (SCUBA-2), Co-Investigator on the Herschel-SPIRE instrument (of which Naylor and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge played a lead role), the MIPS instrument for SIRTF, the Clover B-mode experiment and UK instrument scientist for the Planck Surveyor High Frequency Instrument (HFI). The latter mission is designed to measure all the fundamental cosmological parameters to unprecedented sensitivities.

UNews - Cardiff ��Ѹ�����Դ���߿�Ƭ

U of L’s space imaging group scores success on two fronts

Related Topics

SPIRE earns international award

Related Topics

Dr. Peter Ade discusses Planck mission

Related Topics

UNews - Cardiff ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ