Dr Darren Baskill
Astrophysicist & Educator



 Darren is the outreach officer for the University of Sussex's department of Physics & Astronomy, where he encourages school and college students to consider doing a degree in physics.

 Before that, he taught astronomy at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, predominantly in the planetarium, and before that he did his PhD in X-ray astronomy, after which he spent 4 years calibrating the XMM-Newton Space Telescope, ensuring the the data sent back to Earth was of the highest quality.






Lecture courses

 

Talks

  At the Royal Observatory, Greenwich
   » Astro-photography for beginners course


  At the University of Sussex
   » Our Place in the Universe(s)
   » Astronomical Techniques
Access these courses via Study Direct (access for students only)

  

I present a variety of talks to school, college and other groups, including:


X-treme astronomy: Astronomy can be thought of as extreme for two reasons. Astronomers regularly observe the most extreme objects that nature has to offer, and that observing is done from the most extreme, remote, high-altitude locations on the planet. In the most violent processes, gas can be heated up to millions of degrees, emiting X-ray radiation. In this talk, I introduce the audience to both extremes.