We’ll be joined by Professor Gemma Attrill from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at the end of May to talk about the aurora of 2024.
This talk will start by looking at the spectacular auroral events of May and October last year. From here, we’ll develop an understanding of what creates the aurora, tracing back to the ultimate driver of what is referred to as “space weather” – our nearest star. We’ll consider different aspects of space weather, and why the behaviour of the Sun is increasingly relevant for our lives on Earth today.
About Professor Gemma Attrill, PhD, FInstP, MPhys, CPhys
Prof Gemma Attrill is intrigued by our star, and has been studying and working in the field of Space Weather physics throughout her career. Prof Attrill has led the space environment research undertaken at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory since 2012, and was appointed Chief Scientist Space Weather in 2022. Prof Attrill is currently working as the Lead Scientist for the Dstl Space Systems programme, and is Project Technical Authority for the Space Science project. She is a Chartered Physicist, Dstl Research Scholar, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Bath.
Her experience spans blue-skies solar physics research, funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council and NASA; a window into satellite operations of Hinode’ssolar spectrometer as guest Chief Observer at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA); and more recently the design, build and test of satellite flight payloads: she was the UK technical lead for the Insitu and Remote Ionospheric Sensing (IRIS) suite comprising three British payloads, on-board the US-UK Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction Cubesat Experiment (CIRCE). CIRCE was manifest on the first UK space launch, via the US Department of Defense Space Test Program in 2022.
Prof Attrill works both nationally and internationally with partners across government, academia, and industry. She represents the Ministry of Defence as a member of the Space Environment Impacts Expert Group (SEIEG) established to provide scientific expertise to government policy-makers. She supports the Severe Space Weather Steering Group, and represents MOD’s chief scientific advisor on the Programme Board for the ~£20M SWIMMR (Space Weather Instrumentation, Measurement, Modelling and Risk) programme – an initiative funded by wave 2 of the UK Research and Innovation Strategic Priorities Fund.
Prof Attrill completed her Master’s degree at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, studying the aurora and radar diagnostics of space plasma in the High Arctic. Her PhD in Solar Physics from University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory included a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science fellowship at Kyoto’s Kwasan Observatory. Prof Attrill’s post-doctoral appointment at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics focused on low coronal signatures of solar eruptions, publishing the first observations of coronal waves from NASA’s STEREO satellites and Hinode’s X-Ray telescope. At Dstl, Prof Attrill leads development of the underpinning Space S&T to support Defence & Security needs today, as well as for the generation after next. Prof Attrill’s technical work focuses on mitigating the impact of the Space Environment on various systems and sensing capabilities; at the interface where physics meets engineering.
Main Image credit:
“Credit: NASA/J Curtis of U Alaska/ACRC”, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/