Wanted: Students interested in meteor research
P. Brown (pbrown@uwo.ca),
M. Campbell-Brown(Margaret.Campbell@uwo.ca)
P. McCausland (pmccausl@uwo.ca)
P. Wiegert
(pwiegert@uwo.ca)
The Meteor Physics group at the University of Western Ontario has several openings for graduate students interested in pursuing meteor research. The Western meteor group consists of four full time faculty members, two emeritus faculty, two adjunct faculty, two post-doctoral fellows and a dozen graduate students along with a number of undergraduates. The group has research interests in meteor observations at all sizes using various technologies, ablation modelling, meteorite recovery and orbital dynamics. Students having completed or about to complete undergraduate training in relevant science areas (eg. physics, astronomy, math, geophysics, computer science, geology) are eligible to apply. Available degrees are at the masters (2 year study) or doctoral (4 year study) level in several program areas (Physics, Astronomy, Geology or Geophysics). A collaborative program in planetary science is available in all four of these core graduate program disciplines. If accepted, students are guaranteed a salary during the course of their study program sufficient to comfortably meet tuition and living expenses.
Possible graduate student projects include:
- Search for interstellar meteoroids using radar and optical instruments
- Observational studies of meteor showers using radar, all sky and optical instruments
- Radar measurements and characterization of the sporadic meteor background (velocity distributions, mass distribution)
- Measurement of pre-atmospheric orbits and ablation behaviour of meteorite-producing fireballs through satellite and infrasound measurements
- Computer simulations of comet, asteroid and meteoroid stream dynamics
- Modelling aspects of small meteoroid ablation
- Mass influx of meteoroids at various sizes
- Observation and modelling of Infrasonic airwaves from meteors to measure source characteristics
- Hydroacoustic detection of fireball shock waves in the ocean
- Meteorite recovery field expeditions
- Analysis of spacecraft anomalies resulting from meteoroid impacts
Interested students should contact one of the authors by email. More details of the research programs underway can be found at: http://meteor.uwo.ca
