News

• Donald Lynden-Bell: a tribute It seems an obvious fact that galaxies formed through gravitational collapse. And we all know that quasars are powered by accretion onto supermassive black-holes. But perhaps not everyone knows whom we owe this knowledge to. Donald Lynden-Bell passed away in February 2018. Since the beginning of my studies I was intrigued by the notion of ...
• ICG students win EU travel funding Hedda Gressel and Natalie Hogg, both PhD students with Marco Bruni at ICG, have been awarded a grant by the EU-COST Action CANTATA (Cosmology and Astrophysics Network for Theoretical Advances and Training Actions), a COST Network that Marco has contributed to create. With this funding  Hedda is visiting collaborators in Geneva (Switzerland) for a week, ...
• Big turnout for night of science and stargazing This story has been adapted from a news item that appeared on the University of Portsmouth website. 800 stargazers visited Portsmouth Historic Dockyard two weeks ago to learn about the wonders of the universe and take a tour around the night sky. Those who turned out for the sixth annual Stargazing at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard event had ...
• BritGrav18 is coming to Portsmouth [18-19 April 2018] BritGrav18 @ Portsmouth The 18th BritGrav meeting will be hosted by Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) at University of Portsmouth. The meeting will span two days, Wednesday 18 April and Thursday 19 April 2018. The aim is to bring together young researchers working on all aspects of gravitational physics. Following the BritGrav tradition, the meeting will consist of ...
• RAS Eddington Prize awarded to Prof Claudia Maraston We are delighted to announce that Prof Claudia Maraston has been awarded the 2018 Eddington Medal for Astronomy by the Royal Astronomical Society for ‘investigations of outstanding merit in theoretical astrophysics’. Claudia has published theoretical models for the expected energy emission and mass of galaxies including innovative prescriptions of stellar evolution, which raised strong interest and ...
• Black hole research could aid understanding of how small galaxies evolve This news item is slightly edited from a University of Portsmouth press release, and a Sloan Digital Sky Survey press release.  Research led led by ICG researcher Samantha Penny has found evidence that supermassive black holes prevent stars forming in some smaller galaxies, extending out understanding of how dwarf galaxies evolve. The results, presented at the 231st meeting of the American ...
• Celebrating Prof David Matravers at 80 ICG today celebrated the Prof David Matravers’ 80th birthday with talks from Prof Roy Maartens (University of Portsmouth and the University of the Western Cape) and Dr Karim Malik (Queen Mary, University of London) about David and his work. David Matravers is the founding father of cosmology research at Portsmouth. He came to Portsmouth as head of ...
• ICG stars in the SEPnet Public Engagement Awards On Wednesday 29th of November, ICG researchers enjoyed a very successful night at the annual SEPnet Public Engagement Awards The awards, and the evening ceremony, are a great opportunity to showcase the amazing work we all do in promoting our research and engaging with the public. Often this work requires much dedication and hard-work, and these ...
• Portsmouth astronomers offer cosmic fun at Night Sky Live Reproduced from the University of Portsmouth website: Astronomers from the University of Portsmouth will be on hand to answer a galaxy of cosmic questions at Winchester Science Centre and Planetarium this weekend. Scientists from the University’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) will offer their expertise at Night Sky Live – a two-day festival focusing on galaxies, ...
• Euclid:UK meeting comes to ICG Portsmouth (Dec 18-19) The annual meeting of the Euclid:UK consortium comes to ICG Portsmouth this year. The meeting will be located in the Portland Building (near the ICG) over December 18th and 19th 2017. More details of the meeting and how to register can be found on the meeting webpage https://eucliduk.net/uk-meeting-2017/ Everyone in the UK community is free to ...
• Highly cited ICG papers ICG researchers continue to publish highly cited papers. Between 2010 and 2014, Kazuya Koyama, Claudia Maraston, Will Percival and Daniel Thomas have all published first-author papers that are now within the top 1% of highly cited astronomy papers during this period (using statistics from the Astrophysics Data System). For example, Claudia Maraston’s paper on “Star formation rates and ...
• South Coast Cosmology meeting 2017 in Portsmouth announced South Coast Cosmology meeting 2017 in Portsmouth announced
• Andy Lundgren: New Reader in Gravitational Waves This week, the ICG welcomes a new member of staff Andy Lundgren. As a new Reader in Gravitational Waves, Andy kick-starts our new initiative in gravitational wave science; helping to bolster the G in ICG! Andy joins us from the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI), Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik  Hannover and leads the detection characterisation of LIGO. Here is ...
• Cosmic Gold: Portsmouth researchers herald new era of gravitational wave astronomy Today, the ICG came together to enjoy the announcement of the LIGO+VIRGO detection of colliding neutron stars in the galaxy NGC4993, only 130 million light years away. As shown in the photo below, the whole ICG watched the official NSF press conference to celebrate this great discovery   What makes this event even more incredible is the ...
• Astronomy on Tap #4: The History of The Universe Astronomy on Tap – Portsmouth, UK returns with a fun filled evening on The History of The Universe! Come and join us from 7.15pm on 22nd November at the Kings Pub, Albert Road, Southsea. We have talks by two ICG scientists who are experts in their field: Dr Violeta Gonzalez-Perez: From the Greeks to First Light and Mr Robert Hardwick: From First ...
• Summer 2017 Research at the ICG For the summer of 2017 ICG hosted five different summer undergraduate placements, three focused on scientific research, and two on public engagement with research. The projects for 2017 were: SEPnet placements: Thomas Divers (Southampton Undergraduate), Modelling the galaxy clustering of the DES and eBOSS surveys, with Dr Santiago Avila Virginia d’Emilio (RHUL Undergraduate), Reconstructing the history of the ...
• Map of the cosmos ‘sees’ the dark Universe Scientists from University of Portsmouth have helped to create the most accurate map of the structure of dark matter in the Universe, supporting the theory that dark energy and dark matter make up most of the Universe. For the first time, scientists from the international Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration, including Dr David Bacon from the ...
• Mapping super massive black holes in the distant Universe Astronomers have constructed the first map of the Universe based on the positions of supermassive black holes, which reveals the large-scale structure of the Universe. The map precisely measures the expansion history of the Universe back to when the Universe was less than three billion years old. It will help improve our understanding of ‘Dark Energy’, ...
• ICG @15 June 22nd to 24th, 2017 The Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation is 15 years old this year and we plan to celebrate with an event to bring together past and present students, staff and visitors. We will hold a series of talks, seminars and a family barbecue this June. A summary of our schedule and talks: Thursday, 22nd ...
• UK cosmology meeting @ Portsmouth Registration is now open for UK Cosmology meeting at Portsmouth on Wednesday 5th April 2017. https://www.icg.port.ac.uk/uk-cosmo-at-portsmouth-2017/ You can submit a title and abstract if you would like to contribute a talk. In case we cannot accommodate all contributors, priority will be given to people who did not talk in the last UK Cosmo meetings. Submissions of contributions ...
• Budding astronomers explore wonders of Universe Edited from a story on the University of Portsmouth website: Astronomers of all ages explored the wonders of the Universe thanks to a Stargazing event in Portsmouth last week. University of Portsmouth astronomers hosted the event at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard on Tuesday 31st January 2017 and over 600 people visited despite the misty skies and rain. The ...
• Cosmologists explore quantum gravity in the early universe This news item is slightly edited from a University of Portsmouth press release, which also appears on phys.org. Cosmologists trying to understand how to unite the two pillars of modern science – quantum physics and gravity – have found a new way to make robust predictions about the effect of quantum fluctuations on primordial density waves, ripples in ...
• Visually impaired people helped to ‘see’ Universe This news item is slighted edited from a University of Portsmouth press release. Visually impaired people were able to ‘see’ the Universe this weekend at a galaxy workshop run by University of Portsmouth astrophysicists. The Tactile Universe pilot event was organised by the University’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation to engage the blind and visually impaired (BVI) ...
• Booking open for free Tactile Universe public event for the vision impaired community Booking is now open for the first Tactile Universe public engagement event on Saturday 14th January 2017. This event will provide an opportunity for people with vision impairments to engage with the galaxy research carried out at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation. On Saturday January 14th 2017, the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and ...
• British ESA astronaut and University Alumnus Tim Peake visits Portsmouth Two weeks ago, British ESA astronaut Tim Peake visited Portsmouth to participate in events organised by the University of Portsmouth and the UK Space Agency. Taking place on the 1st and 2nd November 2016, the daytime events celebrated the educational programme of Tim’s Principia mission, while a public event was held in the evening of ...
• Oscar Winner Chris Lawrence visits ICG to explain Visual Effects of ‘Gravity’ and ‘The Martian’ Chris Lawrence, VFX Supervisor for the London-based company Framestore specializing in producing visual effects for film and advertising,  made a recent visit to the ICG to give a talk at one of the institute’s weekly seminars.  In his talk, Chris explained how he and his team created the spectacular visual effects and imagery for the ...
• ICG Great South Runners Raise over £800 for Guide Dogs Six members of the ICG ran the 10 Mile Great South Run this past Sunday in aid of Guide Dogs. Collectively they raised over £800 pounds for this organization.  Donations for this good cause are still being accepted through the ICG South Run Team Justgiving Page. Well done to all who ran, and why not join ...
• Cosmic mystery solved by new map of giant voids and superclusters A team of astrophysicists at the University of Portsmouth have created the largest ever map of cosmic voids and superclusters in the Universe, which helps solve a long-standing cosmological mystery. The map of the positions of voids – large empty spaces which contain relatively few galaxies – and superclusters – huge regions with many more galaxies ...
• For Ada Lovelace Day: ICG Member Answers “What if there were more women in tech?” Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration of the often neglected contributions women have made, and continue to make in science and technology. ICG astrophysicist, Dr. Karen Masters is quoted in this BBC article by Zoe Kleinman written for Ada Lovelace Day which asks: “What if there were more women in tech?“ Dr. Masters responded: “In astronomy there’s a ...
• ESA astronaut Tim to talk to Portsmouth public Update 16:00 12th October – the first batch of tickets is sold out. More tickets will be released through eventbrite at 12.30pm on 19th October.  From the University of Portsmouth Press Office: Astronaut and University of Portsmouth alumnus Tim Peake will attend a free public event to be hosted by the University at the Portsmouth Guildhall on ...
• Tactile Universe Receives Funding from the Royal Astronomical Society We are delighted to announce that the ICG Public Engagement project, The Tactile Universe has been awarded travel funding from the Royal Astronomical Society. The Tactile Universe has previously been successful in obtaining funding from the South East Physics Network, and is now halfway through this funded 6 month Portsmouth based pilot. This new RAS funding ...
• Astronaut Tim to attend schools conference From the University of Portsmouth Press Office: Astronaut and University of Portsmouth alumnus Tim Peake has confirmed his attendance at a UK Space Agency Schools Conference to be hosted by the University on Wednesday, 2 November. Tim will attend the conference, which celebrates the work of over a million UK school students inspired by his Principia ...
• Ogden Schools Physicist of the Year 2015/16 On Wednesday 13th July 2016, the third annual Portsmouth Ogden Schools Physicist of the Year (SPOTY) awards ceremony was held at the University of Portsmouth. The awards ceremony celebrated the achievements of the six Year 12 and 12 Year 10 pupils from local schools and colleges who were put forward for the award by their ...
• Cosmic map will throw light on ‘dark energy’ From the University Press Office: An international team of astronomers has created the largest ever three-dimensional map of distant galaxies in a bid to help them understand one of the most mysterious forces in the universe. Scientists including a team led by Dr Florian Beutler at the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation have spent ...
• ICG Art-Science Project Premiere Announced A new ICG art-science project will open at the TodaysArt Festival 2016, it was announced yesterday. The Dutch festival will bring together an international community of contemporary digital culture and will host a two-day premiere of Entropy on the 23rd and 24th of September. After the premiere, Entropy will be presented as a highlight at ...
• Scientists’ breakthrough in modelling universe From the University of Portsmouth Press Office: Research teams in Europe and the USA – including a cosmologist from the University of Portsmouth – have begun modelling the universe for the first time using Einstein’s full general theory of relativity. Watch Dr Marco Bruni explain how new developments will help create a detailed model of the universe. The ...
• ICG to host Isaac Physics Fellow We’re delighted to announce, that beginning 4th July 2016, ICG will be hosting our first ever Isaac Physics Widening Participation Fellow. Dr. Nic Bonne, currently an (Australian Government funded Endeavour Fellow) was awarded this fellowship to be based at ICG, and will spend 50% of his time working on this project. Isaac Physics, is a Department ...
• Yr 10 Work Experience Week, 2016 ICG has been delighted this week to welcome five young people from local schools (Brune Park, Gosport; Portsmough High School, and Kings School, Winchester) for a period of work experience. The students participated in a variety of events, and were each matched with a supervisor to work on a research project. The week ended today with ...
• ICG Member on BBC Sky at Night ICG member, Dr. Karen Masters (Reader in Astronomy and Astrophysics) appears on this months edition of the BBC Sky at Night show, discussing the UV and X-ray images of the whirlpool galaxy, and what they tell astronomers about stellar birth and death in the merging system. View the episode on iPlayer here: Secrets of the Whirlpool ...
• Star formation puzzle solved From the University Press Office A new study published in the journal Nature has found out why a mysterious kind of ‘galactic warming’ has prevented stars from forming in thousands of galaxies. A team of international astronomers announced the discovery of a new class of galaxies called ‘red geysers’, which can keep gas in these dormant galaxies ...
• ICG wins departmental Athena SWAN Bronze Award The ICG is one of three University of Portsmouth departments to win an Athena SWAN Bronze Award recently. This award recognises commitment to advancing women’s careers. The award, presented by the Equality Challenge Unit, encourages and celebrates good employment practices for women across both STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and – for the first time ...
• SEPnet funding to run astronomy outreach activities with the Portsmouth Blind and Vision Impaired Community A group at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation has been awarded money by the South East Physics Network (SEPnet) to develop outreach and public engagement activities that will engage the blind and vision impaired (BVI) community. The activities developed will focus on some of the latest astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology research carried out at ...
• ICG astrophysicist joins House of Lords debate Next week, Karen Masters will be part of a House of Lords discussion about women in STEM subjects. Karen was invited to attend by Baroness Jolly and Dr Wanda Austin, president and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation, and joins as select group of 30 people from industry, academia, government and the military to take part in ...
• ICG joins LSST We are pleased to announce that the ICG Portsmouth is now an institutional member of the LSST Corporation!
• University of Portsmouth to host schools space conference From the University Press Office: Youngsters will have the chance to present their work to experts from the space industry at a conference hosted by the University of Portsmouth later this year. The Principia Schools Conference, on Wednesday, 2 November, is being organised by the UK Space Agency in collaboration with the University’s Institute of Cosmology and ...
• ICG Director work-shadows Vice-Chancellor ICG Director Bob Nichol recently work-shadowed Graham Galbraith; the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth. Read more about this experience 
• ICG cosmologist featured on BBC Horizon   ICG cosmologist Bob Nichol will be part of a new BBC horizon show discussing the mystery of Dark Energy. The show will air on BBC2 on Wednesday March 30th (8pm) and feature a number of astronomers and cosmologists discussing the discovery and meaning of this strange substance that makes up 70% of the energy density ...
• Undergraduate Visits to the Clanfield Observatory Undergraduate’s studying Physics or Maths at the University of Portsmouth have the opportunity to visit the Clanfield Observatory, and the South Downs Planetarium as part of two different Units, and also to work with volunteers from the Hampshire Astronomical Group to make use of the Clanfield 24″ Reflector for projects. First year Applied Physics (AP) and ...
• Gatcombe Park Primary School has a Visit from Space! Pupils at Gatcombe Park Primary School had a Visit from Space last week, when Professor Claudia Maraston, Dr Jen Gupta and Dr Daniel Thomas visited their school for a morning of astronomy activities. The 30 Year 5 pupils found out more about the Universe that we live in, explored the scale of the solar system, ...
• 2015 ICG/SEPnet Postgraduate Student Outreach Award We are delighted to announce that the 2015 ICG/SEPnet Postgraduate Student Outreach Award has been awarded to Claire Le Cras for her innovative public engagement work using dance to explain astrophysical concepts. Claire has developed a novel way to explain the life cycle of stars through dance, first developing a routine for her entry to Famelab ...

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