Research

ESA’s Gaia satellite released its second astrometric catalogue in 2018, providing distances and velocities for over a billion stars. Using Gaia DR2 to select a sample of local white dwarfs, I have generated a northern hemisphere sample of white dwarfs within 40pc. With this catalogue, and extending it beyond the local area, it has been possible to find more exotic white dwarfs, which provide insight into other areas of astrophysics.

During my time at Warwick, I have undertaken 25 nights of astronomical observations. These have been split between the William Herschel Telescope and the Isaac Newton Telescope at the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands.

Other research interests

I am also interested in exoplanets, including white dwarf planetary systems. My master's research was aimed at fitting a time-series dataset, obtained with FORS2, to retrieve a transmission spectrum of WASP-96b and search for atomic absorption features in its atmosphere. Carrying on from this, I hope to also research evolved planetary systems during my PhD.

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Publications

First Author:

Gaia white dwarfs within 40 pc II: the volume-limited northern hemisphere sample -- McCleery, J. et al., MNRAS (2020)

Co-author

A catalogue of white dwarfs in Gaia EDR3 -- Gentile Fusillo, N.P., et al. MNRAS (2021)

Gaia white dwarfs within 40 pc I: spectroscopic observations of new candidates -- Tremblay, P.-E. et al. MNRAS (2020)

"An absolute sodium abundance for a cloud-free 'hot Saturn' exoplanet" -- Nikolov, N. et al. Nature (2018)

Talks

• "White Dwarfs within 40 pc: the Northern Hemisphere Sample" - (Warwick WD Workshop, July 2021)

• "The Gaia 40 pc Northern Hemisphere Sample" - (Warwick, June 2020)

• "The Story of Stellar Metamorphosis" - A talk based on, and analysis of, pseudoscience (Warwick, June 2019)

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Data

The northern hemisphere Gaia 40 pc sample is available here, in both csv and fits format.

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Teaching

Throughout my PhD, I have undertaken a number of teaching roles within the department. My most recent role was as a (virtual) lab demonstrator for the A1 experiment in the PX271 Physics Skills module. In this lab, students were tasked with simulating planetary systems using Python. My role was to ensure the students understood what was physically occurring when system parameters were changed and to ensure they were making progress rather than getting stuck on computational issues.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I marked the lab books for the A2 experiment in the PX271 module. The primary role of this work involved marking the student's lab books to determine how well they conducted the experiment, recording their results, how well they understood the underlying physics, and whether they properly considered errors. I also needed to liaise with the lab demonstrator and the staff in charge of the experiment to finalise my results. After this, I would meet with the students individually to give them personalised feedback on where they lost their marks and what they could improve upon in future.

In my first role in the department, I took first-year undergraduate assignment classes; this involved marking a set of assignments each week and leading a class with those students in which we went through their worksheets. The purpose of these classes, at least from my point of view, was to make sure the students understood the physics in the worksheets rather than just getting good marks. The topics covered include a wide range of areas to provide general foundational knowledge for first-year physics students. (e.g. classical mechanic/special relativity/E&M/quantum phenomena). I have also helped with marking first-year exam scripts for the PX145 Physics Foundations Module.

Outreach

I am very passionate about physics outreach; I regularly volunteer for events at the university and local schools with the Warwick Planetarium, as well as departmental open days at the University. I recently wrote an article about spotting nebulae as part of the groups "Astronomy at a Distance" series. I am always keen to give talks, or simply answer some questions, feel free to contact me!