Title TBA

Dr. Caitriona Jackman

DIAS

Bio / Profile

ABSTRACT: TBA

Organiser/contact: Prof Lorraine Hanlon

UCD School of Physics, Belfield Campus, Science Centre North, Seminar Room 128 at 2pm

Title TBA

Prof. Birgit Strodel

Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany

Bio / profile

ABSTRACT: TBA

Organiser/contact: Prof Vio Buchete

UCD School of Physics, Belfield Campus, Science Centre North, Seminar Room 128 at 2pm

Title TBA

Prof. Matthew Malek

Department of Physics & Astronomy
The University of Sheffield, UK

Bio / profile

ABSTRACT: TBA

UCD School of Physics, Belfield Campus, Science Centre North, Seminar Room 128 at 2pm

Nanosatellites for Gamma-Ray Astronomy

Prof Lorraine Hanlon

UCD School of Physics

Bio / Profile

ABSTRACT: Gamma-ray space missions have had extensive success in discovering and characterising the transient high-energy universe, including Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). Their connection to catastrophic events involving stellar-mass objects means that GRBs are also excellent electromagnetic counterpart candidates to gravitational wave sources. The discovery of a short-lived gamma-ray transient by Fermi/GBM and INTEGRAL/SPI-ACS, associated with the gravitational wave source GW170817 discovered by Advanced LIGO, has now provided direct evidence for the binary neutron star merger origin of a subset of GRBs. The current fleet of high energy astrophysics missions includes INTEGRAL, Swift, Fermi, and other missions that make up the Inter-Planetary Network. In many cases these missions are all approaching, or have already exceeded, their nominal lifetimes.  There may therefore be a gap in the availability of future high-energy, wide-field facilities, that coincides with the timeline for major upgrades and achievement of design sensitivity for ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors from the early 2020’s and the future LISA mission (c. 2034). One approach to ensuring all-sky coverage for the detection of GRBs is to deploy small instruments on one or more nanosatellite platforms. While having limitations of size and detector volume, there are significant advantages such as rapid implementation timescales, relatively modest costs, in-orbit technology demonstration and wide accessibility. Several such nanosatellite gamma-ray mission concepts are now in development, including EIRSAT-1, and will be discussed in this talk.

Organiser/contact: Prof Lorraine Hanlon

UCD School of Physics, Belfield Campus, Science Centre North, Seminar Room 128 at 2pm