September 2020 Digest

Our newly-revamped Physics and Astronomy Blog aims to celebrate the achievements of our diverse community, to widen participation in events and activities, and to ensure that everyone is aware of what’s happening within our School. 

Under the extreme circumstances of COVID-19, and with many of us working away from campus, it’s more important than ever to maintain our sense of togetherness and common purpose.

September 2020 Digest

Each month we’ll showcase some of the recent highlights of the blog, following on from the success of the engagement programme that ran over the summer months.  This month, we’d like to introduce you to the opportunities available within our student societies, AstRoSoc and PhySoc, and urge you to get involved in these thriving communities.  We showcase the superb work of our postgraduate representatives in their preparations for Black History Month, particularly via the new BHM newsletter. 

Our School has continued to lead a vast range of research projects during the long months of lockdown, including multiple lectures at the EuroPlanet Science Congress; an exploration of North Indian air quality; a European Space Agency grant to develop an interactive “digital earth”; a discovery of an extremely small star in an eclipsing binary by the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS); and new findings of strange patterns of activity in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

You can also catch up on some of the virtual activities from the summer engagement programme, including inaugural doctoral lectures from two former PhD students; a CuppaScience podcast on the James Webb Space Telescope; relive the observations of Jupiter from Hawaiian telescopes in July; and watch “research bites” on Ice Giant exploration, air quality in Africa, and greenhouse gas monitoring in Uganda.  You can also listen to our Head of School and President of the Royal Astronomical Society, Prof. Emma Bunce, in her interview for the BBC Life Scientific.

Get Involved!

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing plenty of opportunities for you to get involved in community activities.  Blog posts are welcome from any member of the school:

• maybe you wish to advertise an event,
• maybe you want to share your experiences of an activity (outreach, EDI, internships, etc.),
• maybe you want to summarise recent scientific discoveries of developments in missions with a Leicester connection,
• maybe you’ve been involved in creating podcasts, video clips, or blogs elsewhere and we can help to share them.

There’s no limit, but we ask you to follow these instructions for submission to the blog, and submit content directly to the editor.  The best content will be included in our 2020 Yearbook towards the end of term.