MIST

Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial

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RAS Awards

The Royal Astronomical Society announced their award recipients last week, and MIST Council would like to congratulate all that received an award. In particular, we would like to highlight the following members of the MIST Community, whose work has been recognised:
  • Professor Nick Achilleos (University College London) - Chapman Medal
  • Dr Oliver Allanson (University of Birmingham) - Fowler Award
  • Dr Ravindra Desai (University of Warwick) - Winton Award & RAS Higher Education Award
  • Professor Marina Galand (Imperial College London) - James Dungey Lecture
Full details can be found here: https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/royal-astronomical-society-unveils-2023-award-winners.

New MIST Council 2021-

There have been some recent ingoings and outgoings at MIST Council - please see below our current composition!:

  • Oliver Allanson, Exeter (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2024 -- Chair
  • Beatriz Sánchez-Cano, Leicester (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2024
  • Mathew Owens, Reading (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2023
  • Jasmine Sandhu, Northumbria (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2023 -- Vice-Chair
  • Maria-Theresia Walach, Lancaster (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2022
  • Sarah Badman, Lancaster (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2022
    (co-opted in 2021 in lieu of outgoing councillor Greg Hunt)

Charter amendment and MIST Council elections open

Nominations for MIST Council open today and run through to 8 August 2021! Please feel free to put yourself forward for election – the voting will open shortly after the deadline and run through to the end of August. The positions available are:

  • 2 members of MIST Council
  • 1 student representative (pending the amendment below passing)

Please email nominations to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 8 August 2021. Thank you!

Charter amendment

We also move to amend the following articles of the MIST Charter as demonstrated below. Bold type indicates additions and struck text indicates deletions. Please respond to the email on the MIST mailing list before 8 August 2021 if you would like to object to the amendment; MIST Charter provides that it will pass if less than 10% of the mailing list opposes its passing. 

4.1  MIST council is the collective term for the officers of MIST and consists of six individuals and one student representative from the MIST community.

5.1 Members of MIST council serve terms of three years, except for the student representative who serves a term of one year.

5.2 Elections will be announced at the Spring MIST meeting and voting must begin within two months of the Spring MIST meeting. Two slots on MIST council will be open in a given normal election year, alongside the student representative.

5.10 Candidates for student representative must not have submitted their PhD thesis at the time that nominations close.

SSAP roadmap update

The STFC Solar System Advisory Panel (SSAP) is undertaking a review of the "Roadmap for Solar System Research", to be presented to STFC Science Board later this year. This is expected to be a substantial update of the Roadmap, as the last full review was carried out in 2012, with a light-touch update in 2015.

The current version of the SSAP Roadmap can be found here.

In carrying out this review, we will take into account changes in the international landscape, and advances in instrumentation, technology, theory, and modelling work. 

As such, we solicit your input and comments on the existing roadmap and any material we should consider in this revision. This consultation will close on Wednesday 14 July 2021 and SSAP will try to give a preliminary assessment of findings at NAM.

This consultation is seeking the view of all members of our community and we particularly encourage early career researchers to respond. Specifically, we invite:

Comments and input on the current "Roadmap for Solar System Research" via the survey by clicking here.

Short "white papers" on science investigations (including space missions, ground-based experimental facilities, or computing infrastructure) and impact and knowledge exchange (e.g. societal and community impact, technology development). Please use the pro-forma sent to the MIST mailing list and send your response to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Quo vadis interim board

 

A white paper called "Quo vadis, European space weather community" has been published in J. Space Weather Space Clim. which outlines plans for the creation of an organisation to represent the European space weather community.
Since it was published, an online event of the same name was organised on 17 March 2021. A “Quo Vadis Interim Board” was then set up, to establish a mechanism for this discussion, which will go on until June 21st.

The Interim Board is composed of volunteers from the community in Europe. Its role is to coordinate the efforts so that the space weather (and including space climate) European community can:

  1. Organise itself
  2. Elect people to represent them

To reach this goal, the Interim Board is inviting anyone interested in and outside Europe to join the “Quo Vadis European Space Weather Community ” discussion forum.

Eligible European Space Weather Community members should register to the “Electoral Census” to be able to vote in June for the final choice of organisation.

This effort will be achieved through different actions indicated on the Quo Vadis webpage and special Slack workspace.

Autumn MIST

We look forward to welcoming you all to the MIST meeting taking place on Friday 24 January 2020 and would like to remind you all of a few details for the day. 

Location and Registration Fees

This year the meeting will be held at the Geological Society (across the courtyard from the RAS) at Burlington House. Registration is open from 09:30 and the meeting starts at 10:30. The registration fee is £25 - we can only accept on-the-door payments in cash.

New Programme

Click here for an up-to-date version of the programme and here for abstracts. Please notify us of any errors or omissions in the programme as soon as possible. 

Presenter Information

Contributed talks are scheduled as 12 minutes long, which should include 2 minutes for questions. Lightning talks must be a maximum of one slide and a duration of 2 minutes. The projector is suitable for slides with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The poster boards are suitable for A0 portrait posters - please do not bring posters wider than A0 portrait as you will be unable to fully display your poster.

Code of Conduct

We expect all attendees to follow the RAS code of conduct.

Europlanet Hub planetary science meeting

The Ireland and UK Hub of the Europlanet Society are conducting their first regional meeting on Friday 27 March 2020 at the Royal Astronomical Society in London. Regional Hubs are a means of promoting and disseminating planetary science research, and related activities, as part of the Europlanet Society's aims.

Reseachers from the Ireland and UK planetary science community are invited to take part in this meeting. The event will encompass the full range of planetary science research within the Ireland-UK communities, as well as showcasing the development of planetary science infrastructures and facilities. The programme will consist of oral and poster presentations.

Presentations are particularly encouraged from early career researchers, and scientists who have disseminated their work via Europlanet networking workshops or research infrastructure. We have five featured invited speakers who will describe their own research or the activities of the Europlanet Society.

For further details about the meeting and how to submit an abstract, click here.

This web page also includes details about a survey on Hub activities. All planetary scientists, regardless of whether they attend the meeting or not, are encouraged to respond to this survey by using the link on the Hub page. This will help focus the Hub's efforts over the next few years, and help make the Europlanet Society a valuable forum for its members.

Autumn MIST rescheduled

The community has voted to reschedule Autumn MIST for 24 January 2020.

We are moving forward with the same roster of speakers and posters that were previously announced. If you had submitted an oral, lightning, or poster presentation, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 10 January so that we can verify the schedule accordingly.

MIST Council would like to thank the MIST community for a huge response to the questionnaire, which had 69 responses.

Autumn MIST cancellation/postponement

Previously, MIST Council announced the cancellation or postponement of Autumn MIST if proposed UCU strike action had not been cancelled by 22 November. The strike action is still scheduled to take place, and as such, Autumn MIST will indeed be cancelled or rescheduled.

We appreciate that this news will inconvenience some Autumn MIST attendees, but after much discussion, MIST Council feels that this is the best way to proceed to ensure a vibrant and constructive meeting.

As such, we would like to solicit the opinions of the community on the best way to proceed from here. If you would like to tell us whether you feel that the meeting should be cancelled entirely, or whether it should be rescheduled (and if so to what date), please fill in this survey by Monday 9 December 2019.

COSPAR ISWAT working meeting

The inaugural working meeting of the COSPAR International Space Weather Action Teams (ISWAT) will be held on 10-14 February 2020 at the Radisson Resort, Port Canaveral, Florida, USA. The ISWAT initiative is a global hub addressing challenges across the field of space weather. Information about the ISWAT initiative is available on the website. This meeting also comes inside the launch window of the Solar Orbiter spacecraft from nearby Cape Canaveral. You can register for the meeting now, and the deadline is 13 December 2019.

ISWAT consists of teams that focus on a variety of key problems and topics in space weather research and forecasting. The teams are organised into clusters (by domain, phenomena, impact, or overarching activities), to facilitate collaboration and ensure complementarity. On the ISWAT website you can register a new team and request to join registered teams.

Read more: COSPAR ISWAT working meeting