Lisa Harvey-Smith

Postdoctoral Fellow in Radio Polarimetry

I'm an Astrophysicist, working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sydney. My main research interests are cosmic magnetism, masers, massive star-formation, supernova remnants and Very Long Baseline Interferometry. I am particularly interested in observing circumstellar material (discs, tori and outflows) by mapping the intense microwave emission these regions generate using many of the world's largest radio telescopes. I co-ordinate the University of Sydney's Astrophysical Maser Group.

I work at the Institute of Astronomy, which is part of the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. We are located on the beautiful Camperdown campus in the centre of Sydney, which dates back to 1850. I live about 25 minutes walk from the campus, in the Leichhardt region of Sydney's inner west.

Latest News:

Parkes Observations I spent a week in August observing the Carina Supershell with the Parkes Radio Telescope. I have also been awarded more time on "The Dish" later this year for extragalactic maser studies.

ATCA Observations In April I travelled to the Australia Telescope Compact Array in Narrabri to observe a sample of extended polarized radio sources believed to have intervening galaxies between the Earth and the extended background galaxies. We will be looking for the signatures of the magnetic field of these intervening galaxies in the Faraday Rotation Measures measured. It was a successful trip and I saw my first wild Emu!

Seven Magnificent Marathons Englishmen Dave Heeley and Malcolm Carr have completed their seven marathons in seven days on seven continents challenge, raising money for Guide Dogs. Dave is blind and uses a guide dog to achieve his independence, something that most of us take for granted. I and four others ran the 42.2 km course with Dave and Mac in Sydney. If you are ever feeling uninspired, read this blog entry from a fellow support runner. Another fantastic description of the Sydney leg from a runner who completed the entire course is available on the Cool Running forum. See full details and pictures of Dave and Malcolm's incredible journey on their Seven Magnificent Marathons website.

Student project complete Year 10 work experience student Nicholas Gustavo Funai and I carried out a proper motion study of methanol masers in W3(OH) across a 15-year epoch. By measuring the change in positions of the masers between 1992 and 2007 (Menten et al. 1992; Harvey-Smith et al. 2008 in prep.) using the European VLBI Network, we were able to test the 3-5 km/s expansion speed measured by Kawamura and Masson (1998) in the radio continuum data from the VLA and the inferred age of the HII region (2300 years). Nicholas has written a project webpage outlining the results of his four day investigation.

Recent results We have found what seems to be a rotating circumstellar disc around a massive star in the DR21(OH)N star-forming region (Harvey-Smith and Soria-Ruiz 2008). The disc was seen in the velocity signature of a methanol maser at 6.7-GHz using the MERLIN radio interferometer. Follow-up images from the European VLBI Network will be published soon. Details are published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a copy of the paper is available to download here.

If you would like more information about my research, please check out the links below or contact me personally. This website will be updated regularly.