Speaker profile
Dr Jonathan Nichols
Available for booking
Leicester, Leicestershire, England
60 miles travel distance
Professional Astronomer
Summary
Dr Nichols is an experienced professional astronomer with a speciality of observing Jupiter.
Full biography
I graduated from the University of Leicester in 1997 with a first class MPhys degree in Physics with Space Science and Technology, and went on to obtain a PhD from the University of Leicester in 2004 with a theoretical thesis on the dynamics of Jupiter's magnetosphere and auroras.
From 2004-2006, I held a postdoctoral research associate (PDRA) position at the University of Leicester before leaving for Boston University, Massachusetts, where I held a PDRA post until 2008, working on a large Hubble Space Telescope program of observations of Jupiter's and Saturn's ultraviolet (UV) auroras.
After returning to a PDRA post at the University of Leicester in 2008, I was awarded a five-year Science and Technology Facilities Council Advanced Fellowship in 2011, and I continue to work with Hubble Space Telescope data, having been awarded time to observe Jupiter, Saturn, Ganymede, and exoplanet WASP-12b.
I was appointed to a lectureship in 2013 and a readership in 2016.
Lectures
The NASA Juno mission to Jupiter
Alien Auroras
The search for auroras from exoplanets
Lots in Space
Space science and auroras (suitable for KS2 children)
