Congratulations to the prizewinners at the AOPP Retreat! We had a very high standard of talks and posters but the following stood out in particular for presenting novel physics results in a very clear and engaging presentation.

Best talk: Tobias Thornes for his talk on forecast skill using imprecise computing Runner up: Tomos David for his talk on entropy measures of evolving oceanic flows

Best poster: Cheikh Mbengue for his poster on storm tracks and climate change Runner up: Hannah Christensen for her poster on a new skill score for probabilistic forecasts

Prof Chris Lintott has been awarded the Institute of Physics 2015 Kelvin Medal and Prize "For his major contributions to public engagement with science through conventional media (especially through television) and by leading citizen science projects through Zooniverse, opening a new chapter in the history of science by enabling hundreds of thousands of people to participate in the process of scientific discovery."

Professor Amanda Cooper-Sarkar has been awarded the Institute of Physics 2015 Chadwick Medal and Prize "For her study of deep inelastic scattering of leptons on nuclei which has revealed the internal structure of the proton."

Further details can be found here

Yesterday a Soyuz-Fregat rocket lifted off at just before 5PM and along for the ride was a new, compact infrared instrument developed by the Planetary Experiments Group in Oxford Physics and RALSpace at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Called the Compact Modular Sounder, or CMS, the instrument is designed to map surface and atmospheric temperature properties, is about the size of a shoe box and has a mass of just 4.5 kg.

This month, Oxford scientists are celebrating ten years of scientific exploration by the Cassini-Huygens mission, a joint NASA-ESA ‘flagship’ mission to explore the gas giant Saturn, its rings and diverse satellite system. Cassini has revealed many wonders in the outer solar system, from the hydrocarbon seas of Titan to the erupting plumes of Enceladus and the swirling storms of Saturn, and more is still to come as this sophisticated robotic spacecraft continues its lonely orbits a billion kilometres from home.