[ad_1]

A cosmic year for UC astrophysicist

Receiving a 2020 Rutherford Discovery Fellowship has capped a stellar year of success for University of Canterbury (UC) planetary astronomer, Dr Michele Bannister.

Dr Bannister, who specialises in the discovery and exploration of small worlds in the Solar System and beyond, will receive $800,000 over five years to fund her research titled Emissaries from the darkness: understanding planetary systems through their smallest worlds.

She believes the populations of small worlds in the Solar System are key to understanding our history.

“Those that come from visiting distant stars, as interstellar objects, record the history of their own systems. The shape and surface compositions of our small worlds document their formation back more than four billion years when the Solar System was a disk of dust and gas,” Dr Bannister says.

“Few of the most distant, least-altered small worlds have been studied, and their past migrations are yet to be fully understood.”

[ad_2]

More at the source