MIST is an informal community of UK-based scientists with interests in physical processes within the Sun-Earth system and other planets. This includes studies of the mesosphere, ionosphere, thermosphere and magnetosphere of Earth and of other planets and the solar wind.
The role of MIST is to help promote these interests to the public, wider scientific community and other stakeholders as well as provide a platform for scientists to present their work to the rest of the UK community. Regular bi-annual meetings are organised: a one day meeting in London in the autumn, sponsored by the Royal Astronomical Society, and an out-of-town meeting each spring. Reports of meetings have been published in the RAS house journal Astronomy & Geophysics, and its predecessor Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
From its inception, MIST has been strongly linked with and supported by the Royal Astronomical Society. All MIST scientists are invited to join the RAS.
Recent News
- Robert Fear (University of Leicester)
- Claire Foullon (University of Warwick)
- Mervyn Freeman (British Antarctic Survey)
- Eleri Pryse (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)
- David Southwood (Imperial College)
- In-situ measurements of space plasmas
- EISCAT 3-D
- Climate and vertical coupling
- Fundamental space plasma physics
- Geomagnetism
- Ionospheric science
- The Aurora
MIST council elections 2010
submitted 17 May 2010Voting is now open in the MIST council elections.
Andrew Kavanagh and Betty Lanchester announced their intention to step down at the spring MIST. Therefore two positions are available on MIST council and five candidates have been proposed:
Andrew Kavanagh has agreed to act as returning officer for this election.
To vote for a MAXIMUM of two candidates email your choices to
a.j.kavanagh
lancs.ac.uk
Ensure that you send your vote from the same email address with which you receive emails from the MIST mailing list. If you are unsure of which email address this is (for example if you bounce or forward emails from this address) then attempt to log into subscribers corner via www.jiscmail.ac.uk where you can identify the correct address or check the headers of any email you receive via the MIST mailing list.
Voting closes at 5pm on the 16th June 2010. Votes received after this time will be discounted.
A New Generation of UK Space Exploration
submitted 17 May 2010(posted by David Williams to the MIST list)
At a successful and very lively UKSP/MIST Missions Forum at last month's National Astronomy Meeting, attention was drawn to the fact that the picture for UK leadership in missions beyond the current round of Cosmic Vision was pretty blank. This means that beyond the projected end of Solar Orbiter and Swarm around 2029 – should these missions be selected – there are no space experiments planned to answer our questions about the heliosphere.
Two decades is a crucial figure in terms of mission development: it takes at least 15 years from concept through to launch, so now is the time when we need to start planning for our future in heliospheric physics, so that we can capitalise on our national expertise, influence scientific direction and train the next generation of scientists.
The schedule we face also has some urgency: ESA are expected to start soliciting ideas for the next round of Cosmic Vision, within the next 6 to 18 months, at which point we need our community to be ready to discuss our next mission concepts. Married to that, we also want to educate ourselves – especially the upcoming generations who will be the mission leaders of the future – on the processes involved in bringing a mission through from scientific concept to realising its launch.
So let's start to address this challenge! There will be a meeting of the UKSP-MIST community, "A New Generation of UK Space Exploration", on Wednesday 14th July (TBC), at the Royal Astronomical Society in Piccadilly, London. Strongly encouraging the participation of all interested groups across the UK, we invite you to bring along your ideas on mission concepts, unexplored areas in heliophysics, burning science questions and the observables you need to address them! We'll also discuss the routes to proposing and developing missions, and a discussion on how we can best position ourselves for these future scientific opportunities.
To find out more, contact the organisers at:
heliophys.missions@gmail.com
Dave Williams, Lucie Green, Colin Forsyth & Jim Wild.
Follow up from spring MIST 2010
submitted 17 May 2010Thanks to everyone involved with organising the NAM meeting in Glasgow for providing an excellent meeting. Special thanks to Alan Thomson for cooridinating MIST session and all MIST convenors.
Congratulations to Jim Wild and Katie Turnbull, both of Lancaster University, who won the Rishbeth prize for poster and talk respectively. Articles based on these presentations will appear in a forthcoming issue of Astronomy and Geophysics.
Mike Hapgood's slides from the MIST business meeting can viewed here as a PDF. This covered topics such as the MIST briefing papers, STP and NERC, RAS and MIST council elections, and teh strategt for in-situ space plasmas.
Notes from the Astronomy Forum that was held during NAM can be viewed here.
Finally, RAS council has decided that the location for the next NAM meeting (2011) will be Llandudno, on the north Wales coast. This was a nnounced at the recent RAS AGM. The venue will be the Venue Cymru conference centre. Dates are likely to be ine the week 17-21 April 2011, once againg avoiding a direct clash with EGU (3-8 April 2011).
MIST Council response to Lord Drayson's review of STFC
submitted 5 March 2010MIST council welcomes the proposed structural changes to STFC that were announced on Thursday 4th March 2010 by the Science Minister, Lord Drayson.
Following the outcome of the STFC re-prioritisation in December, Lord Drayson recognised the problems in tensioning large national facilities, international subscriptions and science grants against each other. MIST council has appreciated the manner in which the Science Minister and Professor Stirling (Chair of STFC) have worked quickly with broad community consultation to address this issue.
The changes announced today will introduce a level of stability to STFC that should prevent a further decline in the level of funding for research within STFC's remit, including the space science area of interest to the MIST community. Of course much good science is still at risk due to the lack of available funds, including support for the excellent Cassini and Cluster missions. We welcome the efforts that STFC, together with ESA, is making to find ways to sustain the critical roles that UK scientists play in these missions. All these positive steps are very welcome and we hope that they will lead STFC to a greater engagement with the community. That engagement is crucial to developing an effective science strategy for STFC and thus preparing for the next comprehensive spending review.
A PDF version is available here.
Briefing Papers
submitted 29 January 2010The first two new briefing papers on areas of MIST science are now available. These have been developed by members of the MIST (and UKSP) community to provide information on areas of specific UK expertise. It is hoped that these executive summaries will help to inform the public and media of the work carried out in the UK by our community whilst also plugging holes in the understanding of policy-makers and funding agencies as to the relevance and importance of our work.
The first two topics that have been covered are Space Weather and Planetary Exploration.
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| Planetary Exploration | Space Weather |
Many thanks to Gabby Provan, Chris Arridge, Stan Cowley and Dave Andrews (Planetary Exploration) and Jim Wild, Lyndsay Fletcher, Alan Thompson and Mike Hapgood (Space Weather) for devoting the time and effort to create these papers.
We intend to develop the next set of papers by the Spring MIST. The following are further topics that have been identifed but are not exhaustive.
If you wish to contribute to any of these topics or if you have an idea for an alternative paper please do get in touch with a member of MIST council.