So last Friday was the second of three meetings between the postgrads of Bristol, Exeter and Cardiff. We are also welcome to give talks on our work so far, which is mainly taken up by second and third years due to the recent of stars of 1st years like me. There were a couple of really interesting talks from Cardiff students and it was very nice to properly understand what people are working on. The talks from the Bristol and Exeter students gave great variety and made us all remember that there are different areas of astrophysics than just those covered by our universities.
Universities always seem to focus on certain areas; it's impossible to have good coverage of all subjects. Cardiff for instance focuses on Galaxies, Gravitational Waves, Star Formation and to a lesser extent Cosmology. However we have little or no current research into Solar physics or Planetary physics. These meetings are great at giving us all a bit of current knowledge in different areas of research.
Hopefully at the final meeting or one next year I can present my work, but at the moment I'm just enjoying learning about other fields of research.
