Discover the latest ideas and developments from across astronomy and geophysics. The A&G Highlights Meeting brings together a range of speakers and topics, offering insights for anyone with an interest in either field.
Programme
| Time | Speaker | Talk |
| 16:00 | Prof Jim Wild, President | Welcome and announcements |
| 16:05 | Dr Ke Zhu · China University of Geosciences, Wuhan · Online | The wettest impactor meets the driest asteroid: reconstructing an early Solar System collision with isotopes |
| 16:35 | Dr Mike Peel · Imperial College London | Dark and Quiet Skies: satellite constellations and the future of astronomy |
| 17:00 | Dr Ualisson Donardelli Bellon · University of Edinburgh | Bullerwell Lecture: From microscopic minerals to planetary magnetic fields |
| 17:55 | Prof Jim Wild, President | Closing remarks |
Featured Talks
The wettest impactor meets the driest asteroid: reconstructing an early Solar System collision with isotopes
Dr Ke Zhu · China University of Geosciences, Wuhan · Online
Angrites are among the oldest volcanic and plutonic rocks in the Solar System. Their parent asteroid formed, melted and differentiated only a few million years after the birth of the Solar System, making angrites an exceptional record of the earliest stages of planetary evolution. They are also among the most volatile-depleted planetary materials known, but how such extreme volatile loss occurred remains uncertain.
Isotopes provide both fingerprints of planetary materials and clocks for ancient events. By combining several isotope systems, we reconstruct a remarkable history for the angrite parent body. Nickel isotopes record high-temperature evaporation and recondensation, pointing to a major energetic impact after the asteroid had already differentiated. Oxygen and chromium isotopes independently identify the impacting material as Ivuna (CI)-like, linking it to some of the most water- and volatile-rich primitive material in the Solar System.
This creates an apparent paradox: one of the wettest types of primitive asteroid material collided with one of the driest differentiated bodies known. Our results suggest that the impact was energetic enough to remove much of the water and other volatile material that it delivered, rather than simply enriching the target.
Aluminium–magnesium isotope dating further indicates that this collision occurred extremely early, within roughly the first million years of Solar System history, providing new insights how early collisions could simultaneously transport material across the Solar System and reshape young planetesimals.
About Dr Ke Zhu
Ke Zhu is a faculty member at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan. His research focuses on planetary geochemistry, particularly the high-precision elemental and isotopic analysis of meteorites and samples returned by space missions, including materials from the Moon and the asteroids Ryugu and Bennu. His work uses high precision elemental and isotopic measurements to investigate planetary accretion, core formation, magmatic differentiation, volatile evolution and impact processes in the early Solar System.
Ke received his PhD in Earth Sciences from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in 2021, with additional doctoral training at the University of Copenhagen. He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Bristol.
His honours include a Humboldt postdoc Fellowship, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoc Fellowship, a Japanese JSPS International Fellowship, 1000 talent plan, and a Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards. This year he was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Early Career Award. He also serves as an Associate Editor for Communications Earth & Environment.
Dark and Quiet Skies and Satellite Constellations
Dr Mike Peel · Imperial College
The night sky is changing dramatically with the advent of satellite constellations. Since Starlink launches started in 2019, the number of satellites in low earth orbit has more than tripled to around 18,000 today. There are millions more planned for the near future from many different companies and countries, and uses spanning from communications to data centres to providing 'daylight as a service'.
These satellite constellations impact astronomy observations across optical, radio, infra-red and submm. With the International Astronomical Union's Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky (IAU CPS) and the RAS Megaconstellations working group, astronomers are collectively working to quantify these impacts and feed that back to industry, alongside developing software tools and engaging with policymakers to mitigate the effects.
This talk will preview the Specialist Discussion Meeting on Friday 16 October that will cover all aspects of this topic.
About Dr Mike Peel
Mike Peel is a postdoc at Imperial College London, having previously worked at the University of Manchester; Universidade de São Paulo; and Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. He co-leads SatHub, part of the IAU CPS. His research focuses on foregrounds for Cosmic Microwave Background experiments (Simons Observatory, GroundBIRD, QUIJOTE, and more), including our Galaxy; submm transients; and instrumental effects. He is currently on the RAS Council.
Bullerwell Lecture: From microscopic minerals to planetary magnetic fields
Dr. Ualisson Bellon · University of Edinburgh
Magnetic minerals are ubiquitous, occurring in the rocks, soils, and even the dust of all rocky planets and meteorites in our Solar System. Through remanent magnetisation, they can record the intensity and direction of ancient magnetic fields, allowing us to track continental motions through deep time and investigate the complex dynamics of planetary molten cores.
For decades, palaeomagnetists have relied on Néel's Nobel Prize–winning theory of uniformly magnetised single-domain particles. However, many of the most stable carriers of magnetic remanence are known to be non-uniformly magnetised particles in so-called vortex states. Micromagnetic modelling has made substantial advances in closing this theoretical gap and improving the foundations of palaeomagnetic science.
Micromagnetic modelling allows us to investigate how vortex magnetic structures behave under different temperatures, pressures, and magnetic-field intensities, where Néel's theory often breaks down. This helps explain why experimental palaeointensity determinations fail at rates exceeding 80%. However, classical palaeomagnetic experiments average signals from millions to billions of grains, limiting how precisely these insights can be applied.
The emergence of magnetic microscopy is changing this. Technologies such as quantum diamond microscopy (QDM) can measure magnetic signals of individual particles, opening the way to more accurate and robust palaeomagnetic investigations.
In this lecture, Dr Bellon will outline how we are rapidly paving the way towards this new era of palaeomagnetic analysis. He will present results from numerical models showing how even a small number of vortex-state particles can accurately record magnetic fields, supporting the use of magnetic microscopy on microscopic return samples from space missions to study the magnetism of the Moon, Mars, and the early solar nebula. He will also discuss how high-resolution synchrotron nanotomography can reveal nanoscopic magnetic particles directly and to integrate these observations with micromagnetic modelling for the interpretation of magnetic microscopy data. Finally, he will describe efforts to establish a framework for single-particle palaeointensity, bridging magnetic microscopy with micromagnetic modelling, and enabling the study of complex palaeomagnetic histories from the earliest stages of planetary evolution with unprecedented detail.
About Dr Ualisson Donardelli Bellon
Dr Ualisson Donardelli Bellon is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Mineral Magnetism at the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh. His research investigates magnetic phenomena at the nanoscale to understand the stability and evolution of planetary magnetic fields, combining micromagnetic modelling with advanced imaging and chemical analysis, including synchrotron-based techniques.
He holds a PhD in Geophysics (University of São Paulo, 2024), an MSc in Geophysics (University of São Paulo, 2021), and a BSc in Geology (Federal University of Espírito Santo, 2018). His doctoral research focused on vortex-state magnetic minerals in carbonate rocks through magnetic mineralogy, synchrotron imaging, and numerical modelling. His academic background spans experimental and computational approaches to mineral magnetism, with applications in palaeomagnetism and planetary evolution.
Dr. Bellon has also won a prize for the Best Geosciences Thesis in Brazil in 2025. He has published in leading journals such as Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, Communications Earth & Environment, and Proceedings at National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Accessibility information
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