Phil Evans' Home
Latest News
Below I list some highlights of recent news that is connected in some way with me or my work.
- Live GRB Catalogue online - The GRB analysis contained in the XRT GRB Catalogue is now automatically carried out for each new GRB (once it is 24 hours old) and the results are posted online.
- New Swift website launched - After a lot of work, our new website has been released. As well as a new design, the underlying system is much more efficient, so the on-demand jobs and GRB processing should run more quickly
- Burst Analyser released - My recent project, the Swift Burst Analyser is now online. A paper describing it is on ADS: Evans et al., 2010, MNRAS, 402, 46
- Swift_Phil on Twitter - I am providing a Twitter feed on a "professional" basis, that is in my role as a Swift scientist. I'm Swift_Phil on Twitter and also have a supporting website.
- GK Per paper in outburst - GK Per has gone back into outburst. Various observing campaigns are watching it. See ATEL 2466 for more.
- GK Per paper published - My paper on the 2006 Dwarf Nova outburs of GK Perseii has been published: MNRAS, 399, 1167.
- New p-distribution paper - Peter Curran has led a paper along with myself, Mat Page, Max de Pasquale and Alexander van der Horst, investigating whether we can tie down the distribution of p — the election energy distribution index — using the late-time XRT spectra. The answer is yes! For more details, see arXiv 0908.0891.
- XRT catalogue published - It's taken long enough, but finally the paper has made it through the typesetting etc stage and into the journal. MNRAS, 397, 1177
- GK Per paper accepeted - My latest lead-author paper, presenting and discussing multi-wavelength data on the 2006 Dwarf Nova outburst of GK Per, has been accepted by MNRAS. It's on arXiv as 0907.1407.
- Most distance object ever observed seen by Swift! - GRB 090423 has a spectrscopic redshift somewhere around 7.6 or 8.2 (see GCN Circ. 9216, 9129), making it the most distant object with a spectoscopic redshift. To see how that fits in with other GRBs, see my Cumulative plot of GRB redshifts for Swift GRBs.
- XRT autoprocessing and catalogue paper accepted - data on VO - The arXiv entry has been updated, and the data are now available through the VO: ivo://uk.ac.le.star.swift/dsa_grb_aux/SwiftXRTGRBCat
- Up to second in Google! - OK, OK, so it's a bit egotistical, but if you do a Google for "Phil Evans" this site is now the second hit. Just got to get rid of that wedding photographer....
- Swift to feature in the Science museum. In July, the Science museum are launching a new exhibition to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the telescope. Swift is due to feature there, along with photos and interviews with Kim and myself.
- XRT autoprocessing and catalogue paper on arXiv. This paper (arXiv 0812.3662) - representing most of my work since joining the Swift project - details the algorithm used to create XRT spectra, the changes to the enhanced positions since Goad et al. (2007), and a few updates to the light curves since Evans et al. (2007), as well as introducing the XRT products generator (below). It also presents a catalogue of results produced from these tools for the 318 GRBs detected by XRT up to GRB 080723B.
- Swift XRT product generator online. You can now create XRT products (enhanced position, light curve, spectrum) for any object detected by the XRT.
- Time-slice GRB spectra. The XRT GRB spectra have a new feature: you can now create time-resolved spectra. Follow the link on the results page for the GRB in question.
- XRT GRB products web site launched. A number of times recently I've thought that there should be a single page per burst linking the various XRFT automatic products, rather than having three separate indices. So, now, there is.
- IGR J08408 paper in press. Earlier this year (2008) Swift triggered on a series of outbursts from the Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient (SFXT) known as IGR J08408-4503. Our paper led by Pat Romano, has been accepted for publication in MNRAS.
- A day in the life video. Brady Haran, a BBC journalist recently followed Rhaana and me to produce a "day in the life" video, partly aimed at encouraging young people into science. The video is online here.
- Swift sees most distant burst. On 2008 Sep 13th, at 7:07am BST, Swift detected a GRB at a redshift of 6.7 (see GCN Circ. 8225, or the NASA press release.) It was about 120,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 km away, the energy had been travelling for 12,826,000,000 years ago.
- Brightest GRB seen by Swift. On 2008 March 19th, Swift detected a GRB. This was half way across the universe, but bright enough to be seen by the naked eye! (It peaked at mag 5). Read about it in this Nature article.
