Forever Keele eZine Summer 2020 | Page 5

Forever Keele 5
© Photo: NASA
seizures, with Dr Woolley saying:
“Wearable health-monitoring devices
offer exciting opportunities to support
individuals managing chronic health
conditions.”
Keele astrophysicist helps NASA
team discover new planet
A new planet has been discovered
orbiting a unique young star after more
than a decade of searching, thanks
to a global research team including a
Keele astrophysicist.
Located around 31.9 light years away,
the star AU Microscopii (AU Mic) has
been studied by scientists for years as
it provides a unique insight into how
planets and their atmospheres form,
evolve and interact with their stars.
For more than ten years astronomers
have searched for planets orbiting AU
Mic and now, using data from NASA’s
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
(TESS) and retired Spitzer Space
Telescope, they have reported the
discovery of a planet orbiting the star.
The planet is around the size of
Neptune and circles AU Mic in just over
a week, and has been named AU Mic
b, with Keele’s Professor Coel Hellier
among the experts to have contributed
to its discovery.
Professor Hellier said: “Our data
helped to show that AU Mic is a very
young star, covered in starspots. This
makes it harder to look for planets
since a planet projected against
the face of a star looks much like a
starspot.”
Young stars such as AU Mic have
strong turbulent motions that generate
strong magnetic fields, which are the
cause of starspots — cooler, darker
and highly magnetic regions similar
to sunspots — that frequently erupt in
powerful stellar flares. Both the spots
and their flares contribute to changes
in the star’s brightness.
The discovery was made by analysing
the light coming from the star and
measuring any dips in light output,
which were caused by the planet
crossing in front of the star in an event
known as a transit.
When a planet crosses in front of its
star from our perspective, its passage
causes a distinct dip in the star’s
brightness. TESS monitors large
swaths of the sky, called sectors, for 27
days at a time, with cameras regularly
taking pictures that allow scientists to
track changes in the star’s brightness.
Regular dips in a star’s brightness
signal the possibility of a transiting
planet, and usually, it takes at least
two observed transits to recognize a
planet’s presence.
Study co-author Diana Dragomir,
a research assistant professor at
the University of New Mexico in
Albuquerque said: “As luck would have
it, the second of three TESS transits
occurred when the spacecraft was
near its closest point to Earth. At such
times, TESS is not observing because
it is busy downlinking all of the stored
data.
“To fill the gap, our team was granted
observing time on Spitzer, which
caught two additional transits in 2019
and enabled us to confirm the orbital
period of AU Mic b.”
Spitzer was a multipurpose infrared
observatory operating from 2003 until
its decommissioning on January 30th,
2020. The mission proved especially
adept at detecting and studying
exoplanets around cool stars. Spitzer
returned the AU Mic observations
during its final year.
The findings of the study, led by Peter
Plavchan, an assistant professor of
physics and astronomy at George
Mason University in Virginia, have
been published in Nature.
Keele ranks Top 75 in global
‘Golden Age’ league table
Keele University has been ranked
Top 75 in the world in a league table
charting the best universities founded
since the Second World War.
The Times Higher Education has
placed Keele in 75th in its global
Golden Age University Rankings 2020.
The table features institutions
established in the period between 1945
and 1966, which the Times Higher
Education describes as the “Golden
Age” in global higher education,
characterised by rapid university
expansion and increasing investment
in research.
The rankings are underpinned by 13
different metrics, and include data on
teaching, research reputation, and
research productivity.
Keele lecturer helps organise
Amnesty International UK’s
online Pride festival
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced
many of this year's Pride events to be
cancelled, but Dr Senthorun Raj from
Keele University helped to organise an
online Pride festival as part of his role
with Amnesty International UK.
Dr Raj, from Keele’s School of Law,
is part of Amnesty International UK’s
Rainbow Network Committee, who
joined forces with UK Black Pride,
Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence and
ParaPride to bring Pride celebrations
indoors with Pride Inside.
The week-long festival started on
Sunday 28th June and included an
online series of gigs, comedy shows,
panel discussions, and arts-based
events featuring an array of LGBTI+
comedians, artists, DJs, musicians and
activists.
Pride remains as important as ever.
The Covid-19 pandemic is having a
disproportionate effect on LGBTI+
people across the globe, who are
historically discriminated against
in their access to health care,
employment, housing and basic
services. This is particularly acute for
marginalised groups within the LGBTI+
community, such as people seeking
asylum, trans and intersex people, and
religious minorities. Pride Inside helped
raise awareness of the adversity faced
by LGBTI+ people both in the UK
and around the world and provided
opportunities for people to take action,
make change, and build community
using online spaces.
Dr Raj said: “Covid-19 won’t stop us