Earnshaw Medal
Awarded to the best final year project
Each year the Institute of Physics in Ireland awards the Earnshaw Medal to the undergraduate student who presents the best final year project.
Earnshaw Prize 2008 Winner:
Eoin Carley from NUIM for his project on The expansion of the Galactic Supernove Remnant Cassiopeia A.
 |
Eoin Carley (front row, second from left) and Physics with Astrophysics class mates in front of the 1.93-m telescope at OHP. (The first extra-solar planet, 51 Peg B, was discovered in 1995 using this telescope.)
Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is the remnant material left over from the supernova explosion of a massive star at the end of its life. It is believed to have occurred in around 1671 AD, making it one of the youngest known supernova remnants in our galaxy. Although it is the brightest extra-solar radio source it is very faint optically and can only be seen on long-exposure photographs. Eoin compared his images of the Cas A with earlier published images to estimate the velocity of the expanding shell of material remaining from the original supernova explosion.
Eoin took the data for his project during a week-long observing trip to the Observatoire de Haute-Provence (OHP) in the southeast of France.
Earnshaw 2008 Nominees:
| Anna Linehan | TCD | A comparison of TLDs vs diodes for in-vivo patient dosimetry |
| Brendan O'Dwywe | NUIG | Observing Cyanide in Space |
| Ciara Leong | CIT | Automated Reading of a Radon Sensor |
| Danny Lynch | UCC | A Single Qubit Gate |
| Eoin Carley | NUIM | The expansion of the Galactic Supernove Remnant Cassiopeia A |
| Graeme Cunningham | UCD | The Photoelectric Effect |
| Irene Mencke | UL | Potential-Dependent Phtoluminescence Spectroscopy and Capacitance-Voltage Measurements on Indium Phosphide Nanostructures |
| Thomas Kelly | DCU | A simple non moving Fourier Transform Spectrometer: Hardware and Software Development |
^ To the top ^