Keynote: Fireworks at the heart of the Galaxy

Presenter(s): Joss Bland-Hawthorn

Affiliation(s): ARC Laureate Fellow; FAA FOSA; Director, Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics; Principal Investigator, Sydney Astrophotonic Instrumentation Labs; A/Director, Institute of Photonics and Optical Science

Session details: Saturday, 2016-03-25 22:15:00, LT101

Abstract

We have known for several decades that a “supermassive dark object” inhabits the centre of the Galaxy, in a compact nebula known as Sgr A*. Every now and then, our satellites detect flares from the vicinity of the object, and there is now strong evidence that Sgr A* was far more active within the last few million years. A great deal is known about the environs of Sgr A* but the true nature of the beast eludes us. Professor Joss Bland-Hawthorn will discuss past, present and future work, including some daring experiments to test the idea of a supermassive black hole.

Biography

Joss Bland-Hawthorn is an ARC Laureate Fellow Professor of Physics and Director of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIFA).

He was born in England before moving overseas in 1985. After receiving his PhD from the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the University of Sussex, he took a 3-year postdoc in astrophysics at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii. In 1988-1993, he was a tenured professor at the Space Physics & Astronomy Department, Rice University, Texas. In 1993, he joined the Australian Astronomical Observatory, Sydney. In 2000, he was appointed Head of Instrument Science, a new division that was created to reflect the increasing need for complex novel solutions to astronomical instrumentation. In 2007, Joss was awarded the prestigious Federation Fellowship with a tenured professorship in the Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIFA), School of Physics, University of Sydney. In 2009, he co-founded the Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS). In 2010, he was Leverhulme Professor at Oxford and held a Visiting Senior Fellowship at Merton College, Oxford. In 2011, he was the Brittingham Scholar at the University of Wisconsin, USA.

He has won numerous awards including the Jackson Gwilt medal from the Royal Astronomical Society (2012) and the W.H. Steel medal from the Australian Optical Society (2015). In 2012, he was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Optical Society of America. In 2014, Joss was awarded the prestigious Australian Laureate Fellowship. He serves on several boards including Section H (IAU) and the Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics (USA). He has delivered numerous lecture series (e.g. Saas Fee, Bologna, Wisconsin) and is a regular speaker on the conference circuit, in addition to delivering occasional addresses at schools, clubs and industry. He was the Canon Lecturer at Canon Inc, Shinegawa, Tokyo (2012), the Plenary Speaker at the Supreme Court Judges conference (2013), and the Allison Levick Lecturer (2014).

He is a regular guest at the University of Oxford, the University of Bologna and the University of Marseille. Joss supervises a group of Honours undergraduate students, MSc and PhD students, and Postdoctoral research fellows. About half work in astronomy and astrophysics and the others work on astrophotonics, space photonics and quantum astronomy experiments. The Sydney Astrophotonic Instrumentation Labs (SAIL) are based at the School of Physics on campus although a lot of shared activity takes place at Macquarie University and the Australian Astronomical Observatory. His group retains strong links with activities at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics, Potsdam; the Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland and NASA Goddard, and numerous other linkages across Asia and Europe. There are more than a dozen groups working on programs that started life at the University of Sydney. In collaboration with the Space Physics group, his team launched the first balloon-based photonic experiment in November 2012; this is to be followed by more balloons and a rocket launch. His developments and patents are increasingly being exploited by medical and telecomm companies, remote sensing and food industries.