Outreach
Having been a member of astronomical societies since a very young age (six years old, or so), I benefitted hugely from hearing great talks and getting fantastic advice from professional astronomers. I've always really enjoyed giving presentations, too, and regularly give talks to astronomical societies across the UK, groups of young people (such as Girl Guides and Scouts), and even the residents of the Camphill Community for adults with learning difficulties here in Milton Keynes.
I currently have talks prepared on the following topics, that I'm willing to present to any groups that are interested:
"Jupiter - Friend or Foe" - it has long been believed that the planet Jupiter has played a crucial role in the development of life on Earth, by preventing us from being overly bombarded by comets and asteroids for the past four and a half thousand million years (or so). Here, I talk about revolutionary work I've carried out while at the Open University, that shows that things might not be quite as simple as people had always thought...
"The Neptune Trojans: A Window to the Birth of the Solar System" - the Neptune Trojans are the most recently discovered addition to the zoo of Solar system objects. Moving around the Sun in a group that stays approximately sixty degrees ahead of the planet Neptune in its orbit, their behaviour and evolution may help shed light on the processes through which the planets formed and migrated to their current location. In this talk, I discuss groundbreaking work carried out in association with Dr. Patryk Sofia Lywkawka, based in Japan, studying the past, present, and future of these enigmatic objects.
"Meteor Showers" - I gave this talk at an Astronomy day that I organised for FUSION, the Open University's physics society, and have since given it to the OU's AstroSoc. The level can be tweaked depending on the target audience, but the talk aims to explain the origin and history of these beautiful displays of "shooting stars", together with some detail on how best to observe them.
I'm also happy to prepare talks based around "What's on in the Night Sky", focused on the time of year I'm giving the presentation, together with talks of a more scientific nature, where I show some of the more beautiful images of the night sky that can be found on the internet, and give an explanation of how we know the things we know about the universe as a whole.
Over the next few months, a number of the projects with which I'm heavily involved will yield exciting new results, and I will no doubt write additional talks to allow me to present my latest results to any interested parties!
Here are a couple of talks I gave at a big event I organised for the 2008 Milton Keynes Science Festival, hosted over on Youtube. The first is an old version of my "Jupiter - Friend of Foe" presentation, while the second is a more general "What's on in the night sky?" type talk. Hope you enjoy them!