Recent Talks

Lecture 2:
- Brief history of space-based gamma-ray astronomy
- Detecting gamma rays
- Fermi mission and instruments

Lecture 1:
- Gamma-ray production in various source classes
- Producing variability on the gamma ray regime

Lecture 1:
- Accretion onto compact objects
- X-ray binaries
- Black-hole binaries (BHB)
- X-ray pulsars

Lectures 5 & 6:
- Multi-wavelength aspects
- Fast spectroscopy
- Spectroscopy analysis demo

Lectures 5 & 6:
- Multi-wavelength aspects
- Fast spectroscopy
- Spectroscopy analysis demo

Lecture 4: ULTRACAM data reduction pipeline
- Demonstration of how to reduce photometric data using the ULTRACAM pipeline software.

Lecture 3: HiPERCAM
- How can we improve ULTRACAM and what would this enable us to do?
- Eliminating atmospheric scintillation noise: Conjugate-plane photometry
- Instrumentation for high-speed photometry III: HiPERCAM

Lecture 4: Models for the variable multi-wavelength emission of black hole
binaries:  compact jets
- standard jet spectral model and the problem of dissipation in jets
- the internal shock model: multi-wavelength spectral and timing properties
- IR/optical QPOs from jet precession
- IR/opt/X-ray fast timing correlations as a probe for the coupled dynamics of accretion and ejection

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the fossil light of the BigBang, is the oldest light that one can ever hope to observe in ourUniverse. The CMB provides us with a direct image of the Universe whenit was still an "infant" - 380,000 years old - and has enabled us to obtaina wealth of cosmological information, such as the composition, age,geometry, and history of the Universe. Yet, can we go further and learnabout the primordial universe, when it was much younger than 380,000years old, perhaps as young as a tiny fraction of a second? If so, thisgives us a hope to test competing theories about the origin of theUniverse at ultra high energies. In this talk I present the results from theWilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite that Icontributed, and then discuss the recent results from the Plancksatellite (in which I am not involved). Finally, I discuss future prospectson ourquest to probe the physical condition of the very early Universe.

Lecture 3; HTRA: Future developments/new technologies
 - X-ray: AXTAR, LOFT, XEUS/Athena, Lobster concept
 - optical/IR; MKIDS, STJs, ultra-fast detectors