Profile

I am interested in Adaptive Optics, which is like the image stabilisation in digital cameras, but for optical telescopes, like this one (made in Newcastle Upon Tyne but now in Spain.) The atmosphere causes twinkling of the stars (and when you can’t see the twinkling youself, it is there but just really fast). This means the images taken by the telescope are blurry and faint, like this. But Adaptive Optics can help fix this: we can measure the “twinkling” using a sensor, and then apply reverse “twinkling” to the light from stars, galaxies, planets and even our sun, by using a deformable mirror, like this one. The mirror is about the size of a 2 pound coin, but ours costs more than a house! It can move over 1000 times per second, and if you put it all together then you can get sharp pictures of the sky, like this one. The really cool bit is when we use lasers to help us measure the “twinkling” more accurately; like the biggest laser pointer in the world! (That is a real photo.)

I work with experiments, and I also do theoretical calculations and I love doing both and working in-between: coming up with new ideas and proving that they can work. So the first step is often writing up what I have got working, sometimes for journals so other scientists can see what I have done. The really fun bit for me is then working on one of a few ideas I usually have on how to improve adaptive optics, or how to do something nobody has thought of before. Because there is a lot of electronics and software involved, I have to sometimes write little computer programmes to control digital cameras, or deformable mirrors, or other equipment. Then the really hard bit for me: I take it all down into our lab, try to build a prototype and prove that my ‘paper model’ really works. If I am lucky, I can ask others in my team to help make a version to take out to a telescope to test but this is really expensive and difficult so it needs to be checked first.