Andrew Collier Cameron is a British

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either o ...

specialising in the discovery and characterisation of

exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

s. He is a founding co-investigator of the WASP project and served as the head of the School of Physics and Astronomy of the

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

between 2012 and 2015 where he is currently a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

Career and research

Cameron earned a doctoral degree from the

University of Canterbury The University of Canterbury ( mi, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was ...

in 1982, with a thesis on southern hemisphere late-type Ca II emission-line stars. Cameron's research primarily focuses on stellar magnetic fields and the discovery and characterisation of extra-solar planets and cool

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth make ...

s. In his early career, he focused on the rotational history and dynamo-generated magnetic activity of cool stars, ultimately producing micro-arcsecond resolution maps of starspot distributions and surface magnetic fields. With Dr R. D. Robinson he co-discovered the centrifugally supported "slingshot prominence" systems in the coronae of the young, rapidly rotating solar-type star

AB Doradus AB Doradus is a pre-main-sequence quadruple star system in the constellation Dorado. The primary is a flare star that shows periodic increases in activity. The primary star in this system spins at a rate 50 times that of the Sun, ...

and other similar objects. Cameron was awarded a personal chair in 2003. He was a co-founder of the

Wide Angle Search for Planets WASP or Wide Angle Search for Planets is an international consortium of several academic organisations performing an ultra-wide angle search for exoplanets using transit photometry. The array of robotic telescopes aims to survey the entire sky, ...

project, which was awarded the 2010

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NG ...

Group Achievement Award for its discoveries. The WASP collaboration includes several UK universities, and has discovered more than 170 gas-giant planets in close orbits about their host stars, using an array of wide-field CCD cameras. WASP detects the dips in light that occur as planets pass between the observer and the host star. Their masses are determined, and their planetary nature confirmed, using

optical spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter wav ...

to measure the reflex motion of the host star about its common centre of mass with the planet. Cameron is also the UK co-principal investigator of the Geneva/PHYESTA/Harvard/INAF/Belfast

HARPS-N HARPS-N, the ''High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher for the Northern hemisphere'' is a high-precision radial-velocity spectrograph, installed at the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, a 3.58-metre telescope located at the Roque de los ...

orth spectrograph project. He is also a team member of the

ESA , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (1 ...

Characterising Exoplanets Satellite Khufu or Cheops was an ancient Egyptian monarch who was the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt, Fourth Dynasty, in the first half of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Old Kingdom period (26th century BC). Khufu succeeded his father Sneferu a ...

(''CHEOPS''), leading the Working Group on light curve analysis. he has over 300 research publications to his name. Cameron also served as Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

between 2012 and 2015.

Teaching

Cameron has taught multiple

undergraduate Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, in the United States, an entry-le ...

courses in

observational astronomy Observational astronomy is a division of astronomy that is concerned with recording data about the observable universe, in contrast with theoretical astronomy, which is mainly concerned with calculating the measurable implications of physical ...

at the School of Physics and Astronomy of the

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

including "Astronomy and Astrophysics II", "Observational Astrophysics", "Observational Techniques in Astrophysics", "Stellar Physics" and "The Physics of Nebulae and Stars II". He partially taught a module in

fluid dynamics In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids—liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including '' aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) ...

whilst his wife,

Moira Jardine Moira Mary Jardine is a British astrophysicist with an interest in young stars, particularly the structure of their magnetic fields and coronae, and the mechanisms by which they interact with their disks and planets. She was promoted to a Pers ...

, was on maternity leave.

Awards and honours

Cameron was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This s ...

(FRSE) in 2002, and was awarded the

George Darwin Lectureship The George Darwin Lectureship is an award granted by the Royal Astronomical Society to a 'distinguished and eloquent speaker' on the subject of Astronomy including astrochemistry, astrobiology and astroparticle physics. The award is named afte ...

of the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NG ...

in 2012.

Personal life

Cameron is married to

, a theoretical astrophysicist specialising in stellar

magnetic field A magnetic field is a vector field that describes the magnetic influence on moving electric charges, electric currents, and magnetic materials. A moving charge in a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular to its own velocity and t ...

s, and with whom he has collaborated in the past. They live in

St Andrews St Andrews ( la, S. Andrea(s); sco, Saunt Aundraes; gd, Cill Rìmhinn) is a town on the east coast of Fife in Scotland, southeast of Dundee and northeast of Edinburgh. St Andrews had a recorded population of 16,800 , making it Fife's four ...

and have 3 children together - Jonathan, Heid, and Emma.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cameron, Andrew Collier 21st-century British astronomers Living people Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Academics of the University of St Andrews Year of birth missing (living people)