Infrared image of rhinos in South Africa. Credit: Endangered Wildlife Trust/LJMU

A collaboration between astrophysicists and ecologists at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) is helping to monitor rare and endangered species and stop poaching. Astrophysical software and techniques are applied to thermal infrared imagery captured by drones to automatically detect and identify animals – even at night, when most poaching activity occurs. The drones can survey large areas of difficult terrain from above, allowing ecologists to access hard to reach areas and monitor wildlife without disturbing the animals. The project will be presented by Claire Burke at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) in Liverpool on Tuesday, 3rd April.

Burke explains: “With thermal infrared camera...

Images of one of the transient events, from eight days before the maximum brightness to 18 days afterwards. This outburst took place at a distance of 4 billion light years. Credit: M. Pursiainen / University of Southampton

Gone in a (cosmological) flash: a team of astronomers found 72 very bright, but quick events in a recent survey and are still struggling to explain their origin. The scientists found the transients in data from the Dark Energy Survey Supernova Programme (DES-SN). This is part of a global effort to understand dark energy, a component driving an acceleration in the expansion of the Universe. DES-SN uses a large camera on a 4-metre telescope in the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in the Chilean Andes...

The mini accelerator STEAM (centre) is driven by Terahertz radiation (yellow, coming from both sides). It can accelerator, compress, focus and analyze the incident electron bunches (blue). Credit: DESY, Lucid Berlin

Mini Pocket accelerator combines 4 functions in one device at the push of a button. The experimental device is driven by a Terahertz radiation source and can accelerate, compress, focus and analyse electron bunches in a beam. Its active structures measure just a few millimetres across. The developers from the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) present their “Segmented Terahertz Electron Accelerator and Manipulator” (STEAM) in the journal Nature Photonics. Terahertz radiation is located between microwaves and the infrared in the electromagnetic spectrum.

One of the ce...

This is an artist’s impression showing the peanut shaped structure in the central bulge. Credit: ESO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Kornmesser/R. Hurt

The first large-scale age-map of the Milky Way shows that a period of star formation lasting around 4 billion years created the complex structure at the heart of our galaxy. The results will be presented by Marina Rejkuba at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) in Liverpool on Tuesday, 3rd April.

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with a bulge at the centre, thousands of light years in diameter, that contains about a quarter of the total mass of stars...