Dave Williams

I'm an astronomer who studies the fuzzy but explosive atmosphere of our Sun. I use, operate, and help design space missions that tell us about the Sun we can't see from inside our own, protective atmosphere.

I look at the Sun in ultraviolet light, where it's covered in rope-like filaments, tenuous bright magnetically-shaped loops and puzzlingly hot ionised gas (plasma).

The techniques I use split the Sun's UV light into its individual colours to tell us what it's made of, how it moves and what the conditions are that produce violent explosions like flares and coronal mass ejections.

A big part of what I do uses the Hinode satellite, and I'm project scientist for its EUV Imaging Spectrometer. Click the links below to find out more about it – and me.