CLUB NEWS

Thursday 6th March - External Lecture by Professor Christine Done on Exoplanets

There will be an exciting talk on Exoplanets delivered by Professor Christine Done of the University of Durham. 

After gaining her PhD from Cambridge on X-rays from black holes, Christine went to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center on an NRC fellowship for two years, where a highlight was being part of ground control flying an X-ray telescope in the payload bay of the space shuttle! She returned to the UK on a junior (2 year) and then senior (5 year) research fellowship from the UK research council before getting tenure at the University of Durham in 2000. She was promoted to full professor in 2006, becoming one of the first women to hold this post. She is also a non-stipendiary Visiting Professor at the Kavli Institute for Physics and Mathematics of the Universe of the University of Tokyo, having spent the academic year 2016/2017 in Tokyo on a sabbatical working with the Japanese Space Agency. 

She is one of only two European scientists supported by the European Space Agency to be part of XRISM, the next Japanese/US X-ray telescope. Christine chairs of one of the Science Working Groups for this mission as well being a member of the Science Management Office which advises the mission Principal Investigator. She also chairs of one of the Science Working Groups for the Athena X-ray satellite (due for launch by the European Space Agency in 2030) and has served as overall chair (Chair of chairs) of the NASA Chandra time allocation committee in 2016. Other indications of esteem include being awarded the Royal Astronomical Society George Darwin Lectureship for a distinguished and eloquent speaker in 2019 and being invited on the Stephen Murray Distinguished Visitor Program, Harvard, USA in 2018.  

We look forward to seeing you all!

Regards

Walsall Astronomical Society