Thanks for visiting the website. If you want to get in touch you can reach me through Twitter or please fill out the form on the right.
123 Street Avenue, City Town, 99999
(123) 555-6789
email@address.com
You can set your address, phone number, email and site description in the settings tab.
Link to read me page with more information.
What started off as a chat about my latest research on finding galaxies with a soon to be built telescope ended up in a massive discussion about the Big Bang!
Read MoreA planetarium show using the latest simulations of dark matter created at the same time as the science. Together with legend director Peter Morse and data visualisation guru Professor Paul Bourke, Dark has been (as of August 2015) shown by 148 planetariums in 25 countries around the world and dubbed into 6 languages.
Read MoreI gave a few words on the opening night of my planetarium show Dark at the SciTech planetarium in Perth, WA. In particular I pointed out that the simulations shown on the big screen were used in my research papers at the same time that this outreach effort was undertaken.
Read MoreIn this paper, we used one of the largest simulated universes in existence (the Millennium Simulation) we populated the Dark Matter haloes with detailed Neutral Hydrogen gas (which radio telescopes can detect). By 'observing' these objects with the expected performance of the Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope we created a series virtual surveys that ASKAP can be expected to detect. These catalogues are as detailed and real as we can hope to have until we turn the telescope on. Some incredible fly through movies and images are available (be warned they can be pretty large). Reference: Duffy, Meyer, Staveley-Smith et al 2012 MNRAS 426 3385D
Read MoreThis paper is our analysis of the ability of the forthcoming Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder to investigate the nature of Dark Energy. It will likely be the first radio telescope to make these kind of observations and is an exciting precursor to the type of science that the full Square Kilometre Array (SKA) can accomplish. Reference: Duffy, Moss, Staveley-Smith 2012 PASA 29 202D
Read MoreMy first TEDx talk at Northbridge to talk about the amazing discoveries in astronomy and the technological innovation that made them possible (as well as the lucrative spin off tech that came from these).
Read MoreThis new high resolution study of neutral hydrogen (HI) in local galaxies, led by Baerbel Koribalska has a great name LVHIS (almost pronounced Elvis... which is reason enough to look at this work). It's also a fantastically thorough and exhaustive study into the kinematic properties of 12 nearby dwarf galaxies. The study of galaxy rotations using the HI line isn't anything new of course, but the dataset presented here represents the quality of data that we can routinely expect from the forthcoming Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and hence is a valuable guide into the uses (and pitfalls) of high resolution kinematic data.
Read MoreThis is a summary of 3 papers released today by the above authors (who all shuffle in order dependent on the exact paper) but basically it's a way to improve the measurements of the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 sample of galaxies... So of course the first question is, what's the BAO?
Read MoreThe latest 'citizen science' project to hit the astronomical shelves is a really fun investigation into the HII (ionised hydrogen) bubbles that form around young, ionising stars or Supernovae explosions. The issue here is that they can be very complex shapes as the shock wave around such ionising sources will typically flow around dense interstellar gas. This means that identifying such objects will be difficult for automated systems but easy for humans with our pretty impressive pattern recognition skills. This is the idea of the project - harness the power of people for a problem that we can uniquely solve.
Read MoreA series of N-body simulations (so gravity only, no worrying about computationally expensive, or indeed theoretically poorly understood gas and stellar physics) of objects that are of similar total mass to the Milky Way halo. So far so Aquarius (which indeed this paper uses) but the nice take on the problem is that the Dark Matter is assumed to self-interact. There's no theoretical reason why it shouldn't (and indeed they reference a Yukawa-like gauge boson interaction that might have just such a velocity-dependent interaction cross-section) but that's beyond my area of expertise, besides it's not a new idea so feel free to wiki it probably. Instead all we need to know is that this could happen and if so, what are the consequences of Dark Matter that can?
Read MoreIn 2011/2012 I was chosen by the Sunday Times Magazine as one of Western Australia's Best and Brightest. Incredibly I'm in the same list as rugby international legend David Pocock, which is absurd but definitely flattering!
Read MoreFollowing on from Duffy et al. (2010), in this paper we considered the same simulated haloes when "Modelling neutral hydrogen in galaxies using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations". This studied the baryonic properties of simulated haloes; focussing on Neutral Hydrogen, but also Molecular Hydrogen and Stellar masses as a function of cosmic time, halo mass and baryonic physics. With this paper I made the Victorian State Finals for the Fresh Science Award. Reference: Duffy, Kay, Battye, Booth, Dalla Vecchia, Schaye 2012 MNRAS 420 2799
Read MoreArticle on my evening planaterium show hosted at SciTech in my local (at the time) newspaper
Read MoreAn article about my work on investigating the so-called 'backreaction' of the baryons, i.e. gas and stars, in galaxies on the surrounding Dark Matter. Typically the latter is assumed to dominate and the effects of the galaxies are ignored, this work showed that this isn't the case when one is close enough to the centre.
Read MoreA brief explanation of the role of simulations in aiding the construction of next generation telescopes. Essentially, how do you know what you will see with a telescope that doesn't exist yet?
Read MoreA great experience touring the gorgeous Wheatbelt of Western Australia visiting schools and government environment agencies in Narrogin with my favourite Chief Science Prof Lyn Beazley. I spoke about astronomy to everyone I could find but I was also given tours by expert park rangers into the outback and learn about the vast arrays of species in this tough but stunning landscape.
Read MoreI came back to the town of Kalgoorlie to speak at the WA Museum, absolutely fascinating place if you've never been there... I highly recommend a visit!
Read MoreA feature article in the prestiguous journal Nature on construction efforts for ASKAP and my own small role in this next-generation telescope.
Read MoreTogether with the wonderful Renae Sayers we were brought on the show to talk about a live debate called Profs and Pints that was running that week. Then questions (and inappropriate plugs on air) went wild.
Read MoreA brief interview on my talks trip round the Goldfields of WA. Fascinating countryside and incredible history in this frontier, goldrush town!
Read More