PhD Projects in Planetary Dynamics

PhD Opportunities in Dynamics of Solar System Bodies

Professor Carl Murray is the only UK member of the Imaging Science Subsystem team on Cassini, and has unique UK access to the images returned by the Cassini spacecraft before the images are made available to the public. PhD projects will involve analysis of the images for the following:

Searches for undiscovered satellites in the region of Saturn's F ring and co-orbital with other moons.

Understanding the variety of dynamical phenomena in the F ring and how the ring will change as its orbit and that of the satellite Prometheus approach anti-alignment in December 2009. Methodical satellite searches could put limits on the material that could be present. The student would be expected to learn about orbit determination techniques in the process.

The Cassini F ring work is being led by the QMUL group and the appointed student would be expected to become familiar with our image processing software and use it to provide a more complete understanding of this time-varying ring.

The dynamics of Kuiper Belt objects are being studied to investigate tthe origin and evolution of these objects. This makes use of detailed computer simulations to understand the interactions of these bodies with the planets over the lifetime of the Solar System.