It took more than 4 decades to build an observatory that could detect the ripples in spacetime that Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity predicted. In this talk Dr Sue Bowler (University of Leeds) discuss how they do it, why it took quite so long and what the new field of gravitational wave astronomy has to …

Prof Brad Gibson, Director of the E.A. Milne Centre for Astrophysics; The University of Hull, returns to WADAS to introduce us to Polar Astronomy. The harsh and equally stunning landscapes which define the polar regions of Earth are not immediately thought of as being ideal for conducting cutting-edge explorations of the cosmos.  Despite the challenges that such …

Dr Katharine Johnston from the University of Leeds uses observations taken with radio telescopes such as ALMA in Chile and e-MERLIN based in the UK to understand how massive stars form by being fed material by their surrounding accretion discs Discs have long been theorised to exist around forming stars, but it is only in …

Greg Cooke, University of Leeds, simulates terrestrial exoplanets and paleo climates and uses these simulations to predict possible future observations of terrestrial exoplanets. Some planets have very different chemical compositions to Earth. For example, some may have more methane and carbon dioxide. Others may have no oxygen, which likely means no ozone and therefore little …

Dr David Benoit, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Physics and Astrochemistry at Hull University, brings asks the question of ocean worlds: Could there be life under the ice?