Galway Astronomy Club are pleased to announce details of our April club meeting, which will take place at 7.30 pm on Monday the 8th April in the Menlo Park Hotel, Terryland, Galway.

Talk: ‘Star Formation with the ESO VLT.’

I am an observational astronomer studying star formation and the earliest stages of planet formation. The majority of my data is obtained with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. The VLT is one of the worlds most advanced optical telescopes and the flagship facility for European ground-based observatory.  I will discuss the VLT, the instruments that have been most important for my work and present some of the most recent results from my group.

Speaker: Dr Emma Whelan (MU)

Emma Whelan graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 2001 with a BA in Physics with Astrophysics. From 2001 to 2005 she studied at the Dublin Institute for Advanced studies for a PhD in observational astronomy specialising in star formation and graduated with a PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2005. She continued her work in this area at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies as part of the Marie Curie Research and Training Network JETSET from 2005 to 2009. In 2009 she was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship at the Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble and studied there until 2011. In 2012 she moved to the Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik Tübingen. In 2016 she was appointed as a lecturer in the Experimental Physics Department. Dr Whelan is also a research associate of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.