Duncan Lorimer, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University, has been named the keynote speaker for the 2015 Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers Conference in June.

Every year, thousands of amateur astronomers gather at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, to learn more about techniques and strategies used by astronomers who are researching in the field.

“We get to study these very exotic stars,” Lorimer said. “Pulsars themselves are incredibly unusual. They’re formed in supernova explosions, and that happens about once in a century. They’re rare. The stars are the size of a large city, but the mass of the sun. It’s always fun to talk about these exciting objects.”

Lorimer studies compact objects such as black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs using radio pulsars – rapidly-spinning, highly-magnetized neutron stars.

One of Lorimer’s breakthrough discoveries came in 2007, when a researcher on his team at the time discovered a radio burst from another galaxy, using the Parkes Radio Telescope in New South Wales, Australia.

Since this was the first time these bursts had been discovered, they were named Lorimer Bursts. As scientists discovered additional bursts, the phenomenon became known as fast radio bursts.

In 2012, two WVU postdoctoral students, using the same telescope with upgraded electronics, discovered four more fast radio bursts.

Most recently, in 2014, Lorimer and a collaborator discovered the coldest white dwarf star ever detected.

Lorimer arrived at WVU in May 2006 from the Jodrell Bank Pulsar Group, where he worked as a Royal Society research fellow. He earned his doctorate and master’s degrees from the University of Manchester, U.K.

For more information, contact Duncan Lorimer at 304-293-4867 or Duncan.lorimer@mail.wvu.edu.

-WVU-

ma/11/24/14

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