Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation

News

  • Watch ICG Member on the Sky at Night ICG member, Dr. Karen Masters will make an appearance on the next episode of the Sky at Night, first airing this Sunday 8th June, 10pm on BBC4. The theme for this month’s episode (first airing Sunday 8th June) is Impacts. Dr. Masters discusses impacts on the biggest scales – the collisions of galaxies, with Sky at Night ...
  • ICG professor is recognised in the first SEPnet Public Engagement Awards ICG’s Professor Claudia Maraston has been recognised for her excellent public engagement activities in the inaugural SEPnet Public Engagement Awards. SEPnet (the South East Physics Network) has awarded prizes to 4 researchers from across their partner institutions for their exceptional contribution to engaging the public with their research, and highly commended a further 4 researchers ...
  • Space scientists visit Stamshaw Junior School. The “Visit to Space”, the outreach and educational programme designed by Claudia Maraston, Daniel Thomas and Jen Gupta of the ICG, and organised by UP for It Juniors, www.upforitjuniors.co.uk, which is part of the University’s Education Liaison and Outreach Team, visited Stamshaw Junior School in Portsmouth on May 20. The response of pupils and teachers ...
  • 2014 ICG/SEPNet Student Outreach Award We are pleased to announce that the 2014 ICG/SEPnet Postgraduate Student Outreach Award is awarded to David Wilkinson, for his significant involvement and leadership of outreach activities during his time at ICG, especially since he became the ICG Student Outreach Representative (Jan 2013). As well as participating in many of the ICG outreach events, David ...
  • ICG Led Workshop on the ‘Maths of the Universe’ is the favourite at the Royal Institution Maths Masterclass ICG outreach officer Dr. Jen Gupta, contributed a workshop on “The Mathematics of the Universe” for the Royal Institution Mathematics Masterclass for Hampshire, held at Southampton University in March. Pupil’s attending the workshop calculated the number of galaxies in the Universe based on the number observed in the Hubble Deep Field and the size of ...
  • ICG at the 2015 General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union. Claudia Maraston is co-Chair together with Claus Leitherer (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore) and Stephane Charlot (Institut d’Astrophysic de Paris) of a Focus Meeting that was awarded time during the 2015 General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union that will take place in the Hawaii islands. The Focus Meeting, selected out of 43 applications is entitled ...
  • ICG leads the first publication of the SDSS-IV collaboration The very first scientific publication by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV international collaboration (http://www.sdss3.org/future/) is being led by a team from the ICG including David Wilkinson, Claudia Maraston, Daniel Thomas, and Lodovico Coccato. SDSS-IV will formally start in summer 2014, but prototype data within the survey MaNGA (Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO) have already ...
  • Best measurement yet of Universe’s expansion A team from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) including the ICG’s Matthew Pieri have announced the best measurement yet of the Universe’s expansion by measuring the spectrum of light from distant quasars that has passed through gas clouds on its way to us. For more information on this remarkable measurement, please visit the SDSS-III website. The ...
  • NAM2014 in Portsmouth Receives Over 430 Submissions The Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting 2014 (NAM2014) is being held in Portsmouth this year from June 23rd to 26th, and we have just finished the abstract submission process. We are delighted to receive over 430 submissions, with a final total that includes submissions to the UK Cosmology Meeting (being held as part of NAM2014) ...
  • Ripples of excitement The world of cosmology has been a-buzz this week with the first claimed detection of gravitational waves (ripples in the fabric of spacetime) imprinted in the most distant light in the universe – the cosmic microwave background. The presence of primordial gravitational waves is a distinctive prediction of cosmic inflation – the idea that our entire ...
  • Space scientists visit Gatcombe Park Primary School. The “Visit to Space”, the outreach and educational programme designed by Claudia Maraston, Daniel Thomas and Jen Gupta of the ICG, and organised by UP for It Juniors, www.upforitjuniors.co.uk, which is part of the University’s Education Liaison and Outreach Team, visited Gatcombe Park Primary School in Portsmouth on March 7. The response of pupils and ...
  • ICG Member Visits Galileo’s House Today is 450 years since the birth of Galileo Galilei, arguably one of the founders of modern cosmology, and certainly of observational astronomy and cosmology. By chance, ICG member Dr. Karen Masters had the opportunity to visit the house in which Galileo spent the last years of his life (some of it under house arrest) just ...
  • Stargazing for Schools a huge success In January primary school pupils joined cosmologists from the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation for a day of stargazing and navigation at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Organised by the ICG and the HMS Warrior 1860 Education Team, ‘Stargazing for Schools’ took place at Action Stations and on board HMS Warrior 1860 on Wednesday 22 January 2014 ...
  • ICG outreach in Mexico ICG outreach activities recently reached   Mexico City, where Gianmassimo Tasinato gave a public lecture in one of the main high schools.  A crowded auditorium of interested students listened to the lecture,  curious to see what happened during the first instants of our universe life. The students were  very surprised to know how much we can ...
  • ICG PhD researcher is FameLab UK “wildcard” ICG PhD student Claire Le Cras came second in yesterday’s South East regional final of the FameLab UK competition. FameLab contestants have just three minutes to explain a scientific concept using only the props they can carry onto the stage. Claire wowed the judges in the regional heat by using dance to explain the colours ...
  • New stringent constraints on Dark Energy With the SDSS Supernova Survey now over, Betoule et al. (2014) today provides one of the  “most stringent constraints to date on the nature of dark energy” using a combination of the SDSS and SNLS supernova surveys; only a 5.7% error on w, the equation-of-state of Dark Energy (see above or Fig 15 in paper). ...
  • First Result from Galaxy Zoo Hubble ICG PhD student Tom Melvin has led the first result from the Galaxy Zoo: Hubble project which asked members of public to classify galaxies from public Hubble Space Telescope surveys. Tom measured how the fraction of bars in visually identified spiral galaxies changed with redshift, confirming that at z=0.7 bars are much less common than ...
  • End of an era: Original SDSS is over The final data of the original Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) was published today, bring the end of an era of tremendous discovery. The original SDSS started in 2000 and performed a large-scale survey of the northern hemisphere detecting millions of galaxies and stars. In 2005, the SDSS was extended for a further three years ...
  • Portsmouth SEPnet PhD Scholarships: PhD Grand Challenges 2014 The SEPnet Universities aspire to solve some of the biggest problems in physics. These are the Grand Challenges of today. To advance towards solutions, we have established the Grand Challenge programme which may help fund your research towards a PhD. We’ve a number of challenges and SEPnet PhD Scholarships available, across all our research themes. ...
  • ICG Featured on CCi Live in the Skies The CCi Live Channel from the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Portsmouth decided to do a special show on Friday entitled “CCi Live in the Skies” and featuring content from and interviews with members of the ICG. This tied into the BBC StargazingLIVE event ICG were involved in, as well as ...
  • A One-percent Measure of the Universe Researchers from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), including many members of the University of Portsmouth Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, today announced that they have measured the distances to galaxies more than six billion light-years away to an unprecedented accuracy of just one percent. Their measurements place new constraints on the properties of the ...
  • StargazingLIVE in Portsmouth Over 5,500 members of the public joined amateur astronomers, ICG members and colleagues from other local Universities and BBC presenters for the Portsmouth Stargazing Live 2014 event last night. The event, held at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard in conjunction with the BBC is one of only three nationwide events that BBC Learning are running this ...
  • Public Lectures at Winchester by ICG researcher Claudia Maraston held two public lectures on December 11 at 4.30pm and 6.30pm at the Winchester Science Center (previously Intech) in Winchester, entitled “Shining Galaxies in a Dark Universe”. Both lectures were well attended, especially the evening’s one, which featured a nearly full theatre with over 140 attendees. Many young students and teachers were present ...
  • Postdoctoral Researcher in IFU Galaxy Evolution Employment type: Fixed term contract (2 years commencing 1 September 2014, with a possible extension) Employment basis: Full-time Salary: £27,854 – £31,331 Date published: 12 December 2013 Closing date: 3 February 2014 Interview dates: Interviews will be scheduled between 24 and 28 February 2014 The Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG, www.icg.port.ac.uk) intends to appoint a Postdoctoral Researcher with expertise ...
  • Stargazing LIVE in January 2014  The Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation is collaborating with locations at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard (including HMS Warrior 1860 and Action Stations) once again to put on a massive Stargazing LIVE event, on Tuesday January 7th 2014.   This year our event was selected by BBC Learning be one of three main national events tied into the ...
  • A Visit from Space makes The News Earlier this year, the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation launched a new free educational outreach activity in collaboration with the University of Portsmouth Education Liaison and Outreach Team (ELOT). “UP for Space: A Visit from Space” has visited five primary schools in the Portsmouth area since June 2013 (St Swithun’s Catholic Primary School, Corpus Christi ...
  • ICG researcher at the Female Knowledge Festival ICG member Claudia Maraston was invited to the first regional festival of “Female Knowledge” in northern Italy. The event, lasting two days and sponsored by the City Council, the regional council, the Illy Caffe’ enterprise and the European Community, aimed at gathering successful female experts in various fields of knowledge, spanning from medicine to literature ...
  • Postdoctoral research positions at the ICG We are now accepting applications for a number of postdoctoral research positions at the ICG. Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cosmology and Astrophysics – 10010307 Postdoctoral Researcher in Theoretical Cosmology – 10010310 Postdoctoral Researchers in Cosmology and Astrophysics – 10010308, 10010309, 10010312 Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cosmology and Astrophysics – 10010307 External link Employment type: Fixed-term contract (5 years) Employment basis: ...
  • The ICG-PGS Christmas Lecture 2013 The Portsmouth Grammar School and the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth present a free public lecture: “Gravity: From Newton to Einstein and beyond” Dr. Kazuya Koyama, Reader in Cosmology, ICG, University of Portsmouth The Universe is expanding at an increasing rate, but is this really due to some mysterious “Dark Energy”, or were these great ...
  • NAOC postdoctoral positions in collaboration with ICG Portsmouth Under a new scheme, applicants are invited to apply for postdoctoral positions hired by Division of Galaxy and Cosmology, National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) in collaboration with Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG), University of Portsmouth in the UK. Both NAOC and ICG are institutional members of Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV) (http://www.sdss3.org/future/), and ...
  • The UK-Japan 150 year anniversary, Science, Technology and Innovation Symposium – Astronomy & Space Science ICG members are involved in the UK-Japan 150 year anniversary, Science, Technology and Innovation Symposium – Astronomy & Space Science. Bob Nichol will give a lecture on Galaxy Survey and Cosmology. Kazuya Koyama has been involved in the organisation. The symposium will take place from13:00 to 19:00 on Friday, 6th December 2013 at the Embassy of ...
  • Portsmouth wins £2million in new research grants ICG researchers have been awarded £2million in two major new grants. Over €2million has been won by Will Percival for his research into dark energy and the growth of large-scale structure in our universe. The award from the European Research Council will support a team of researchers including two postdoctoral researchers and several graduate students over ...
  • ICG and Applied Physics become supporters of the Institute of Physics’s Juno Code of Practice We are happy to announce that the “Physics Group” at Portsmouth (which consists of the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, and the members of the School of Environmental and Earth Sciences who contribute to the Applied Physics course) have been accepted as supporters of the Institute of Physics’s Juno Code of Practice. Project Juno was ...
  • ICG Hosts a Meeting of the Fellowship of the Royal Society for the encouragment of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce Last night ICG hosted an event in the RSA Fellowship South East region series Ideas in Education. Dr. Karen Masters and Dr. Jennifer Gupta showcased the range of Zooniverse citizen science projects (including Galaxy Zoo which ICG have had a longstanding involvement in) and led a discussion on how they can be used to enrich ...
  • Fellowships at the ICG The ICG welcomes candidates interested in applying for research fellowships to be held in Portsmouth. A variety of potential fellowships are available, including Royal Society University Research Fellowships, Ernest Rutherford Fellowships (STFC), Marie Curie (EU) fellowships, and possibly national fellowships from the candidate’s country of origin. Expressions of interest for fellowships should be addressed to an ...
  • ICG at Bestival 2013 Three members of the ICG spent the first weekend of September 2013 at the Bestival music festival on the Isle of Wight engaging with a slightly different audience to usual! ICG Outreach Officer Jen Gupta and PhD students Cullan Howlett and Andreas Papadopoulos were joined by visiting student Lise du Buisson to run a stand ...
  • ICG members involved in the new Intech Space Lecture series Bob Nichol will deliver the first lecture of the new Intech Space Lecture series tomorrow evening (September 11th 2013). Bob will give a popular talk on “Supernovae, Dark Energy and Nobel Prizes”. He is not the only ICG member giving such a lecture during the series as Claudia Maraston provides a lecture entitled ...
  • ICG article contributes to raise impact parameter of international Journal The article “Stellar population models at high spectral resolution” by ICG researchers Claudia Maraston and Gustav Stromback published in 2011 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society was acknowledged for “significantly contributing to raise the overall journal impact parameter by 13%, from 4.9 to 5.521”. This has good implications on REF as ICG ...
  • ICG involvement in new Symposium of the International Astronomical Union. Claudia Maraston of the ICG is part of the Scientific Organising Committee of a Symposium of the International Astronomical Union that was successfully selected. The Symposium entitled “Galaxy Masses as Constraints of Formation Models” will be held in Oxford in July 2014 (http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/iau311/). It will be the occasion to celebrate the career of Roger Davies, ...
  • PGS student work experience at ICG Fergus Houghton-Connell, a sixth form student from Portsmouth Grammar School, has been gaining work experience at the ICG for last 4 weeks. Fergus (center) has been helped by Chris D’Andrea (right), Andreas Papadopoulos (left) and (sometimes) Bob Nichol (photographer). Fergus spent his time looking at images of supernova host galaxies as well as making color ...
  • ICG researchers involved in largest 3-D map data release from SDSS Many ICG researchers are proud to be part of the tenth data release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) . This release gives astronomers, and the public, access to the largest 3-D map of the Universe .
  • Work experience students visit the ICG The ICG recently hosted a number of students on short work experience visits to learn what it is like to be a researcher in astronomy. Ellie Waddington (Yr 11 Tunbridge Wells School for Girls), Vince Parker, Tom Knapman (both Yr 10 from Crofton School in Stubbington) and Liam Stigant (Yr 12 Portsmouth Grammar School) ...
  • Tenth Data Release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III is happy to announce Data Release 10. DR10 includes hundreds of thousands of new galaxy and quasar spectra from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), which ICG members have been heavily involved in, and in addition to all imaging and spectra from prior SDSS data releases. This release also features the ...
  • Applied physics graduation
  • Secondary school pupils think bigger with the ICG 22 key stage 3 pupils from local schools joined ICG members Jen Gupta, Claire Le Cras and Rafal Szepietowski for the Think Bigger workshop last week (3 July), organised by the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation in collaboration with the University of Portsmouth Education Liaison and Outreach Team. The morning began with an introduction talk that ...
  • ICG at the Houses of Parliament As part of the successful SEPnet programme, members of the ICG were invited to celebrate their success with colleagues and MPs at the Houses of Parliament on Monday July 8th 2013. The event was also to celebrate the successful launch of SEPNet2, the next phase of this network of physics departments across the ...
  • National Astronomy Meeting 2014 We are pleased to announce that the National Astronomy Meeting 2014 will be held here in Portsmouth from 23rd to 26th June. The conference website can be found at http://www.nam2014.org/.
  • Pupils feedback to “A Visit from Space” St. Swithuns pupils have expressed their gratitude to the ICG scientists who ran the first “Visit from Space” (see http://www.icg.port.ac.uk/node/3107), writing letters for each activity that was carried out. Very touching!
  • A visit from space: a new educational outreach activity from the ICG Claudia Maraston and Daniel Thomas assisted by ICG members Jen Gupta, Emma Beynon, David Wilkinson and Edd Edmondson, have launched a new educational outreach activity for local primary schools. This programme called “A Visit from Space” will bring scientists into the classroom, making it easier for schools to access the resources and expertise of the ...
  • ICG members inspire A-level students at the Cosmology Masterclass Around 50 A-level students from Portsmouth and beyond visited the University of Portsmouth yesterday (20 June) to attend the 2013 Cosmology Masterclass hosted by the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation. The morning started with an “Introduction to Cosmology” lecture by ICG’s Dr Karen Masters, giving an overview of the cosmology that students may encounter in their ...

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