Prof. Mark Thompson (University of Hertfordshire)
Talk Outline
I will provide an overview of the next international radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array, and its precursors MeerKAT and ASKAP. I’ll pay particular attention to current & forthcoming Galactic Plane survey projects with these telescopes and the tremendous new science that will result.
The recording of the talk can be found here.
About the Speaker
Professor Mark Thompson is currently a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Hertfordshire (but soon moving to the University of Leeds as the new Head of School there). He completed his PhD in millimetre-wave astronomy at the University of Kent in the Electronics Department and bounced around Kent on various short term postdocs positions in Electronics and Physical Sciences before settling down as a lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. His research specialisms are massive star formation and astronomical surveys of the Milky Way galaxy, where he tries to uncover the formation processes of massive stars and their impact upon the surrounding ISM. He is currently working on the MeerKAT Galactic Plane Survey which is a groundbreakingly sensitive map of the inner third of the Milky way with the new MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.