J. P. Leahy

Teaching

Research Interests

• The Cosmic Microwave Background
• DRAGNs. See my Atlas of DRAGNs (with Alan Bridle & Richard Strom).
• Numerical modelling of jets.
• Magnetic fields in the interstellar, intracluster, and intergalactic media.
• Techniques of synthesis imaging, especially using MERLIN.

Current projects

• The Planck spacecraft, due to be launched by ESA in 2009. I am coordinating the effort to characterise the polarization systematics of the Low Frequency Instrument.
• Galactic Synchrotron polarization, as a CMB foreground contaminant. With my former student Zamri Zainal Abidin, I used the 100-m Effelsberg Radio Telescope to map polarized emission away from the Galactic plane, in collaboration with Wolfgang and Patricia Reich and Richard Wielebinski.
• Spectral mapping of DRAGNs, with my Ph.D. student Barnabas Rugyendo, Tom Muxlow and Robert Laing.
• Optical jets in 3C galaxies, with, Stefi Baum, Chris O'Dea, Bill Sparks, and Andre Martel.
• Hercules A and other radio galaxies in X-ray clusters (with my former student Nectaria Gizani and Simon Garrington).
• OCRA: The One-Centimetre Receiver Array: A radio "camera" being constructed by Jodrell Bank, Torun Radio Observatory and the University of Bristol.

Is the Universe Screwy?