Talking about Colliding Galaxies on the Sky at Night

I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in filming for this month's Sky at Night. The theme of the show is Impacts, and I was invited to talk with Chris Lintott about colliding galaxies.

We filmed in Oxford in a back room at the Natural History Museum. It was a really fun experience for me, and fascinating to hang around and watch them film other segments for the show around the museum.

HST image of merging galaxies Arp274

The show will air on BBC4 this Sunday 8th June, at 10pm, and be repeated three further times on BBC. It will also be available to download via the BBC iPlayer. For more details on how to watch visit the BBC Website for Sky at Night: Impacts

Forty Years of Women at Wadham

I had a lovely experience as an undergraduate at Oxford University, and my college was Wadham College (founded by Dorothy Wadham in 1610). Wadham was proud of having been amongst he first Oxford colleges to admit women in 1974, and this year is celebrating 40 years of women at Wadham.

I was invited to participate in these celebrations, and you might spot me profiled among the women on the news item about Forty Years of Women at Wadham.

There's a page of Wadham Women's Voices , with an entry from me about studying Physics at Wadham in 1997-2000 (shockingly - for me - not too long after the halfway point of the history of women at Wadham).

As I was in touch with the alumni office, they also invited me to do a longer interview about my involvement with the Galaxy Zoo project, which is led out of the Oxford Physics Department. I guess they couldn't resist the pun: Masters of the Galaxies.

They also took this nice photo of me in the Wadham back quad during my visit.

Sadly Physics at Wadham is still struggling to attract women, with none listed in the recent yearbook I was sent. I hope 20 years from now I'll be able to tell a different story.