AXAA-2017 Conference Public Lectures
As part of the 2017 Australian X-ray Analytical Association Conference in Melbourne, we hosted two public lectures.
"Journeying to the Centres of the Planets" by Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely, planetary scientist at the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering (ANSTO).
Let’s go on a journey not just to visit the planets of our solar system, but to get to know them more intimately though understanding their varied and downright dangerous insides. We’ve yet to actually dive under the clouds of the gas giants, crack through the ice of the dwarf planets or drill into the rocks of the terrestrial planets – so how do we know what lies beneath planetary surfaces?
Every planetary interior is not just a high-temperature environment, but also a high-pressure one and pressure is the largest variable that we have to play with. Ranging from the vacuum of space (10-30 atmospheres) to the centre of a black hole (1030 atmospheres), pressure can have amazing effects on even the simplest of materials. For instance, did you know that crystals of solid oxygen turn red in colour at tens of thousands of atmospheres?
To build up the pictures of planetary interiors has required the merging of keenly observed astronomy, complex theoretical calculations and the most elegant of experiments. I’ll explain how we’ve got to the pictures that we do have, how we can re-create these planetary conditions here in Australia and where there’s work to be done!
"Journeying to the Centres of the Planets" by Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely, planetary scientist at the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering (ANSTO).
Let’s go on a journey not just to visit the planets of our solar system, but to get to know them more intimately though understanding their varied and downright dangerous insides. We’ve yet to actually dive under the clouds of the gas giants, crack through the ice of the dwarf planets or drill into the rocks of the terrestrial planets – so how do we know what lies beneath planetary surfaces?
Every planetary interior is not just a high-temperature environment, but also a high-pressure one and pressure is the largest variable that we have to play with. Ranging from the vacuum of space (10-30 atmospheres) to the centre of a black hole (1030 atmospheres), pressure can have amazing effects on even the simplest of materials. For instance, did you know that crystals of solid oxygen turn red in colour at tens of thousands of atmospheres?
To build up the pictures of planetary interiors has required the merging of keenly observed astronomy, complex theoretical calculations and the most elegant of experiments. I’ll explain how we’ve got to the pictures that we do have, how we can re-create these planetary conditions here in Australia and where there’s work to be done!
"When Art and Science Collide: X-ray Fluorescence Elemental Mapping of Nineteenth Century Paintings From The National Gallery of Victoria", presented by Michael Varcoe-Cocks, Head of Conservation, National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).
Since 2009 the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and the Australian Synchrotron (AS) have formed a unique partnership that brings science and art together for the purpose of investigating some of Melbourne’s most loved cultural objects.
The NGV’s Conservation department is comprised of six specialist sections determined by material categories of the collection. The painting conservation section has made particular contributions in the field of Technical Art History and regularly employs conventional transmission x-radiography, handheld XRF and micro-sampling methods for analysis of collection works.
Through the support of the Australian Synchrotron’s XRF beamline the use of high definition X-ray fluorescence elemental mapping has provided unparalleled investigative abilities to the scholarship of cultural objects and particularly a group of paintings produced in the late nineteenth century.
The mapped elemental data from the surface and sublayers of these paintings reveals the spatial distribution of pigments comprised of heavy metal elements. This data leads to the understanding of artist’s choices of materials, their working technique, the visualisation of concealed images and identification of non-original layers applied by later hands.
This lecture will discuss key investigations over the course of this partnership and the development of the methodology that furthers our understanding of cultural heritage.