On 10th October, Astro-Obs researchers Carola Zanoletti, Houda Haidar, Beth Gould, and Melissa Ewing organised a watch party for the Royal Institution’s Ada Lovelace Day Live ‘science cabaret’! The annual event celebrates the contributions of women in science, and aims to inspire and empower the next generation of women in STEM.
Students and staff alike gathered in the evening for pizza, before sitting down together to watch the live stream.
As Newcastle’s local committee for Piscopia – an initiative founded to foster participation from women and other under-represented genders in maths and physics – Carola, Houda, Beth, and Melissa aim to put on more EDI events throughout the year, and build a community in the school of Maths, Statistics and Physics!
Dr Ann Njeri’s recent press release article discusses the issue of keeping Kenyan girls in education and what can and is being done to help address it. Statistics shared by Dr Njeri in her article paint a clear motivation behind the importance of tackling this problem, such as the fact that only 18% of Kenyan women aged over 25 have completed secondary education. Fortunately, the Elimisha Msichana, Elimisha Jamii (EMEJA) foundation, founded by Dr Njeri, is working to solve this issue, by tackling contributing problems such as misconceptions about STEM among young schoolgirls, through the hosting of Astro-STEM workshops and mentorship programmes, as well as much more. However, as Dr Njeri points out, more help and deeper institutional change is needed to fully solve this problem. To find out more about what is causing low academic retention among Kenyan schoolgirls, the work of EMEJA, and what more can be done to help, see her full article linked below.
Last week, PhD student Houda Haidar and Native Scientist coordinator Hania Tayara, partnered to organise an astronomy demonstration for Arabic-speaking refugee and asylum-seeking children. The demo was part of a broader scientific workshop that was held at Newman Catholic College in London. Houda’s demo focused on black hole physics and included three main activities.
The first activity helped the children understand the concept of density. This was demonstrated using a golf ball and a larger foam ball, to show that the biggest objects are not always the ones with the most mass.
Houda participates in these three activities with the children, to teach them important concepts for black hole physics.
The second activity involved understanding space-time curvature. The golf ball and the foam ball were dropped on a scarf, which represented the “fabric” of space-time. The children could then observe which object led to deeper curvatures in the scarf.
The third activity involved understanding how accreting black holes obscured by dusty materials can be detected using a mid-infrared camera. Houda used a black bag to represent the dusty torus of accretion material, which can obscure accreting black holes. Despite the black bag preventing Houda from being seen by human eyes (or a camera in the optical wavelengths), with an infrared camera, Houda could be seen behind the black bag.
A fun and simple model Houda made to help teach the children about active galactic nuclei. It includes a dusty torus, an accretion disc, and even jets!
Other scientists from different disciplines (e.g., medicine, biology) also presented engaging demonstrations and tutorials. These ranged from extracting DNA from a strawberry to recording signals from the brain.
In January 2023, Dr Vicky Fawcett and Dr Chris Harrison won a ~£14K STFC Spark Award [1] to put towards a project celebrating the history of astronomy and telescopes in the North East of England. The award, along with contributions from both Newcastle University and the Great North Museum: Hancock (GNM), will be primarily used to develop a six month exhibition, hosted by the GNM in 2024.
The museum exhibition will showcase the rich history of astronomy in the North East, from the 1800’s when Gateshead was home to the largest telescope in the world (the Newall Telescope) to the 20th century, when Grubb Parsons of Newcastle manufactured many important telescopes that continue to perform cutting edge science today. The exhibition will also highlight the ongoing state-of-the-art astronomical research carried out in the region, such as the projects involving the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Despite the strong link between astronomy and the local area, the extent of impact that the North East of England has had on the progression of astronomy is relatively unknown. The exhibition will therefore aim to raise awareness of astronomy and telescope engineering in the North East and instil a sense of pride in the STEM successes of the region. The exhibition will also be designed to ensure that a large portion of objects and artefacts will be transportable, with the aim to host similar smaller-scale exhibitions at other venues across the region.
One key objective of the project is to inspire young people in the region to engage more with STEM and raise awareness of STEM-related careers (with a particular emphasis on schools based in areas of low socio-economic background). This is especially important in the North East, which has the lowest percentage of young people in the UK who say a career in science would interest them [2]. The project aims to address this issue by running a series of educational workshops alongside the museum exhibition, that will deliver the Key Stage 2 & 3 science curriculum in a more relatable and engaging way. These workshops will be delivered by Newcastle University and project partners: the GNM, Kielder Observatory and Durham University. Finally, a key aspect of the project will involve teacher training sessions, in order to equip teachers with the confidence and knowledge needed to deliver the astronomy workshops at school beyond the end date of the project.
Happy International Women’s Day! On this special day, Astro-Obs/Cosmo women organised a fun yet relaxed gathering, where MSP students & staff came together to recognise the outstanding achievements of women, and how they continue to carve out a place for them in science.
The event was held in the Herschel Penthouse, where attendees were welcomed with tea & cake.
Astro-Obs students colouring together while enjoying tea and coffee.
Colouring sheets featuring various female scientists (e.g., Ada Lovelace, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Mae Jemison, Florence Nightingale) and space (e.g., astronauts, exoplanets, galaxies) were provided, creating an outlet for people to express themselves and unleash their inner artists. Some were lost in their thoughts as they coloured, while others shared stories about their lives and the women that inspired them. The atmosphere was very friendly and engaging, with everyone praising each other’s colouring skills.
Exoplanet travel poster colouring sheet.
It was amazing to see how a simple activity like colouring can bring a sense of togetherness and solidarity.
Lots of MSP students and staff sat together taking some time to relax and celebrate International Women’s Day together!
Fan fact: When asked to name a female role model, the most common answer was ‘’Mum’’. Who’s your female role model?
People sharing the names of the women who are an inspiration to them.
November 2022: This month Nature Astronomy published a special issue of their journal, featuring four articles on sonification of astronomical data, co-ordinated by the Audio Universe team, led by Dr. Chris Harrison. Furthermore, Chris Harrison will be one of five expert panellists in a webinar on sonification in space sciences run by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).
The Nature Astronomy special issue is introduced by the editor with a commentary entitled “Hearing is Believing“. The special issue is a result of the Audible Workshop, that was organised and chaired by the Audio Universe team (including Chris Harrison, Anita Zanella and Nic Bonne), that took place in the Lorentz Centre (Leiden) last year. This workshop brought together 50 researchers from a variety of backgrounds including astronomy, sound perception, sound design and education. The workshop discussed the current status of astronomy sonification projects as well as the current challenges facing progress in this area and ideas for future plans. Nature Astronomy took this opportunity to allow sonification to be included as a figure for the first time. Hopefully opening up the door for many more published sonifications in this journal and others. Some of the outcomes of the workshop are summarised in the articles below:
Partly due to this work, and due to the wider Audio Universe project, UNOOSA contacted Chris Harrison to act as a consultant on a policy recommendation document they are working on the topic of sonification and accessibility in space sciences. As part of this UNSOOA Space for Persons with Disabilities project they are running a public webinar on the 17th of November, and Chris is one of the five expert panellists taking part.
Earlier this year, Dr. Chris Harrison and Audio Universe were presented the Early Career Academic Award at the Newcastle University Engagement and Place Awards, a showcase celebrating innovative collaborations between the University and the public that demonstrate research excellence and work for the public good. The Early Career Academic Award recognises these qualities in engagement projects led by an early career academic from across all of the university faculties. At the time of consideration, the planetarium show had been downloaded by 31 planetariums internationally and has received over 1,300 combined views in English, Spanish and Italian.
For more information on the Audio Universe project, which seeks to make astronomy more accessible for the visually impaired and enable us to interpret astronomical measurements using senses other than sight, can be found at www.audiouniverse.org.
Our Ph.D. student, Aishwarya Girdhar was featured as the “Physicist of the week” by The Working Group for Equal Opportunities (AKC) of the German Physical Society (DPG) in the 52nd week of 2020. Aish is a second-year Ph.D. student at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in Garching, Munich, and is jointly supervised by Dr. Chris Harrison at Newcastle University and Dr. Vincenzo Mainieri at the European Southern Observatory.
Wednesday November 18th is LBGTQ+ in STEM day, a day to celebrate the diversity of people who contribute to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The date represents American astronomer and gay activist Frank Kameny’s Supreme Court fight against workplace discrimination. For more information see https://prideinstem.org/lgbtstemday/ .
LGBTQ+STEM Day on social media
Here at Newcastle, this falls in our undergraduate “buffer week”, a short breather between classes. We would therefore like to invite students (PGR and undergraduate, LGBTQ+ and allies) to an online social get-together at 12:00; the zoom details were sent by email, contact us if you’d like to be included. We will suggest a few topics for discussion and/or a few social games, but please feel free to have lunch or a snack handy, and we will break into smaller groups for conversation.
A few topics I’d be happy to hear discussion on:
What can Newcastle and our School do to better support LGBTQ+ people?
How is the pandemic difficult for LGBTQ+ people in particular?
How can we build supportive communities under these conditions?
I would also like to draw your attention to a few resources that may be of interest:
The Astronomy OutList is a list of LGBTQ+ astronomers and allies who have chosen to publicly identify ourselves in case this is of help to colleagues or students who want to get in touch: https://astro-outlist.github.io/
The American Physical Society carried out a detailed survey on the climate for LGBT+ people in physics: https://www.aps.org/programs/lgbt/
Chris has been awarded public engagement grants from STFC and the Royal Astronomical Society to make a planetarium show and educational resources that are accessible to blind and vision impaired children. This build on a pilot project done last year at the British Science Festival in collaboration with blind astronomer Dr Nic Bonne. Uniquely, the planetarium show will use sounds and narration as the main methods of communication, with visuals acting as a secondary mode of communication. When COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed we will regularly visit our partner schools to also co-develop BVI-accessible classroom based activities around the subject of astronomy that use both sounds and tactile models. Here you can listen to a little taster of the soundtrack below and see a photograph of some of the tactile models.
The 3D models showcased in this montage were created by Nicolas Bonne for A Dark Tour of the Universe, an astronomy show for the blind and visually impaired. Image Credit: ESO/M. Zamani, Nicolas Bonne, S. Brunier, TRAPPIST/ E. Jehin, EHT Collaboration, Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Millennium Simulation Project, NASA/ Goddard/ SDO, WMAP Science Team
