Andrew Collier Cameron

Last updated

Andrew Cameron

FRSE
Born
Andrew Collier Cameron
Spouse Moira Jardine
Awards George Darwin Lectureship
Scientific career
Fields Astronomy [1]
Institutions University of St Andrews
Website risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/andrew-collier-cameron(e9b0e012-48e6-4003-a427-313ec72683fb).html

Andrew Collier Cameron FRSE is a British astronomer specialising in the discovery and characterisation of exoplanets. [2] [1] He is a founding co-investigator of the WASP project and served as the head of the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of St Andrews between 2012 and 2015 where he is currently[ when? ] a professor. [2]

Contents

Career and research

Cameron earned a doctoral degree from the University of Canterbury in 1982, with a thesis on southern hemisphere late-type Ca II emission-line stars. [3] [4] Cameron's research primarily focuses on stellar magnetic fields and the discovery and characterisation of extra-solar planets and cool stars. [5]

In his early career, he focused on the rotational history and dynamo-generated magnetic activity of cool stars, ultimately producing micro-arcsecond resolution maps of starspot distributions and surface magnetic fields. [6] With Dr R. D. Robinson he co-discovered the centrifugally supported "slingshot prominence" systems in the coronae of the young, rapidly rotating solar-type star AB Doradus and other similar objects. [7]

Cameron was awarded a personal chair in 2003. [2] [8] He was a co-founder of the Wide Angle Search for Planets project, which was awarded the 2010 Royal Astronomical Society Group Achievement Award for its discoveries. [2] [8] The WASP collaboration includes several UK universities, and has discovered more than 170 gas-giant planets in close orbits about their host stars, using an array of wide-field CCD cameras. WASP detects the dips in light that occur as planets pass between the observer and the host star. Their masses are determined, and their planetary nature confirmed, using optical spectroscopy to measure the reflex motion of the host star about its common centre of mass with the planet. [9]

Cameron is also the UK co-principal investigator of the Geneva/PHYESTA/Harvard/INAF/Belfast HARPS-North spectrograph project. [2] [8] He is also a team member of the ESA Characterising Exoplanets Satellite (CHEOPS), leading the Working Group on light curve analysis. [2] [8] As of 2018 he has over 300 research publications to his name. [2] [1] [10]

Cameron also served as Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of St Andrews between 2012 and 2015. [2] [8]

Teaching

Cameron has taught multiple undergraduate courses in observational astronomy at the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of St Andrews including "Astronomy and Astrophysics II", "Observational Astrophysics", "Observational Techniques in Astrophysics", "Stellar Physics" and "The Physics of Nebulae and Stars II". [11] [8] He partially taught a module in fluid dynamics whilst his wife, Moira Jardine, was on maternity leave. [12]

Awards and honours

Cameron was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 2002, [13] and was awarded the George Darwin Lectureship of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2012.[ citation needed ]

Personal life

Cameron is married to Moira Jardine, a theoretical astrophysicist specialising in stellar magnetic fields, and with whom he has collaborated in the past. [12] They live in St Andrews and have 3 children together - Jonathan, Heid, and Emma.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stellar rotation</span> Angular motion of a star about its axis

Stellar rotation is the angular motion of a star about its axis. The rate of rotation can be measured from the spectrum of the star, or by timing the movements of active features on the surface.

WASP-2 is a binary star system in the Delphinus constellation located about 500 light-years away. The primary is magnitude 12 orange dwarf star, orbited by red dwarf star on wide orbit. The star system shows an infrared excess noise of unknown origin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zeeman–Doppler imaging</span> Investigative astrophysics technique

In astrophysics, Zeeman–Doppler imaging is a tomographic technique dedicated to the cartography of stellar magnetic fields, as well as surface brightness and temperature distributions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HD 15082</span> Star in the constellation Andromeda

HD 15082 is a star located roughly 399 light years away in the northern constellation of Andromeda. The star is a Delta Scuti variable and a planetary transit variable. A hot Jupiter type extrasolar planet, named WASP-33b or HD 15082b, orbits this star with an orbital period of 1.22 days. It is the first Delta Scuti variable known to host a planet.

Moira Mary Jardine is a British astrophysicist with an interest in young stars, particularly the structure of their magnetic fields and coronae, and the mechanisms by which they interact with their disks and planets. She was promoted to a Personal Chair in 2012, making her the first female professor of Physics at the University of St Andrews.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HK Aquarii</span> Star in the constellation Aquarius

HK Aquarii is a single variable star in the equatorial constellation of Aquarius. It is invisible to the naked eye, having an average apparent visual magnitude that fluctuates around 10.99. The star is located at a distance of 81 light years from the Sun based on parallax. The radial velocity is poorly constrained but it appears to be drifting further away at a rate of ~2 km/s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WASP-21</span> Star in the constellation Pegasus

WASP-21 is a G-type star that is reaching the end of its main sequence lifetime approximately 850 light years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. The star is relatively metal-poor, having 40% of heavy elements compared to the Sun. Kinematically, WASP-21 belongs to the thick disk of the Milky Way. It has an exoplanet named WASP-21b.

WASP-76, also known as BD+01 316, is a yellow-white main sequence star in the constellation of Pisces. Since 2014, it has had one suspected stellar companion at a projected separation of 85 astronomical units.

WASP-26 is a yellow main sequence star in the constellation of Cetus.

WASP-48 is a subgiant star about 1400 light-years away. The star is likely older than Sun and slightly depleted in heavy elements. It shows an infrared excess noise of unknown origin, yet has no detectable ultraviolet emissions associated with the starspot activity. The discrepancy may be due to large interstellar absorption of light in interstellar medium for WASP-48. The measurements are compounded by the emission from eclipsing contact binary NSVS-3071474 projected on sky plane nearby, although no true stellar companions were detected by survey in 2015.

Qatar-2 is a K-type main-sequence star about 595 light-years away. The star is much older than Sun, and has a concentration of heavy elements similar to solar abundance. The star features a numerous and long-lived starspots, and belongs to a peculiar variety of inflated K-dwarfs with strong magnetic activity inhibiting internal convection.

WASP-61 is a single F-type main-sequence star about 1560 light-years away. The star age is much likely younger than the Sun's at approximately 3.8+1.8
−0.9 billion years. WASP-61 is depleted in heavy elements, having just 40% of the solar abundance of iron.

WASP-52 is a K-type main-sequence star about 570 light-years away. It is older than the Sun at 10.7+1.9
−4.5 billion years, but it has a similar fraction of heavy elements. The star has prominent starspot activity, with 3% to 14% of the stellar surface covered by areas 575±150 K cooler than the rest of the photosphere.

WASP-41 is a G-type main-sequence star. Its surface temperature is 5450±150 K. WASP-41 is similar to the Sun in its concentration of heavy elements, with a metallicity Fe/H index of −0.080±0.090, but is much younger at an age of 2.289±0.077 billion years. The star does exhibit strong starspot activity, with spots covering 3% of the stellar surface.

WASP-80 is a K-type main-sequence star about 162 light-years away. The star's age is much younger than the Sun's at 1.352±0.222 billion years. WASP-80 is similar to the Sun in concentration of heavy elements, although this measurement is highly uncertain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">V1005 Orionis</span> Young flame star in the constellation of Orion

V1005 Orionis is a young flare star in the equatorial constellation of Orion. It has the identifier GJ 182 in the Gliese–Jahreiß catalogue; V1005 Ori is its variable star designation. This star is too faint to be visible to the naked eye, having a mean apparent visual magnitude of 10.1. It is located at a distance of 79.6 light years from the Sun and is drifting further away with a radial velocity of 19.2 km/s. The star is a possible member of the IC 2391 supercluster.

CD−34°8618, also known as KELT-13 or WASP-167, is a yellowish-white hued star located in the southern constellation of Centaurus. It has an apparent magnitude of 10.52, making it readily visible in medium sized telescopes, but not to the naked eye. Based on parallax measurements from the Gaia spacecraft, the object is estimated to be approximately 1,350 light years away from the Solar System. It appears to be drifting closer to it, having a radial velocity of −0.53 km/s.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Andrew Collier Cameron publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Andrew Collier Cameron - University of St Andrews". risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 February 2017.
  3. ↑ Collier, A. (1982). Late-type Ca II emission-line stars in the Southern Hemisphere (Doctoral thesis). UC Research Repository, University of Canterbury. doi:10.26021/7260. hdl:10092/8057.
  4. ↑ "AstroGen - The Astronomy Genealogy Project". astrogen.aas.org. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
  5. ↑ "Andrew Collier Cameron's Home page". star-www.st-and.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 February 2017.
  6. ↑ Donati, J.-F.; Cameron, A. Collier (11 October 1997). "Differential rotation and magnetic polarity patterns on AB Doradus". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 291 (1): 1–19. Bibcode:1997MNRAS.291....1D. doi: 10.1093/mnras/291.1.1 . ISSN   0035-8711.
  7. ↑ Collier Cameron, A.; Robinson, R. D. (1 January 1989). "Fast Hα variations on a rapidly rotating cool main sequence star – I. Circumstellar clouds". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 236 (1): 57–87. Bibcode:1989MNRAS.236...57C. doi: 10.1093/mnras/236.1.57 . ISSN   0035-8711.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Prof. Andrew Cameron | PHYESTA". phyesta.supa.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 February 2017.
  9. ↑ Pollacco, D. L.; Skillen, I.; Cameron, A. Collier; Christian, D. J.; Hellier, C.; Irwin, J.; Lister, T. A.; Street, R. A.; West, R. G. (12 October 2006). "The WASP Project and the SuperWASP Cameras". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 118 (848): 1407–1418. arXiv: astro-ph/0608454 . Bibcode:2006PASP..118.1407P. doi:10.1086/508556. ISSN   1538-3873. S2CID   24601511.
  10. ↑ Andrew Collier Cameron publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  11. ↑ "Physics&Astronomy at St Andrews". www.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 February 2017.
  12. 1 2 "Love and the Two-Body Problem". Science | AAAS. 28 March 2003. Retrieved 22 February 2017.
  13. ↑ "Professor Andrew Collier-Cameron FRSE - The Royal Society of Edinburgh". www.rse.org.uk.
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