{"id":33,"date":"2016-03-04T12:24:50","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T12:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drmeganargo.net\/?page_id=33"},"modified":"2026-02-12T12:06:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T12:06:58","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/drmeganargo.net\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome"},"content":{"rendered":"

My name is Megan Argo, professional astrophysicist and award-winning science communicator. I am a Reader (as of September 2025) in Astrophysics at the University of Lancashire<\/a> in Preston (see my teaching page<\/a>), studying galaxies in the nearby universe with radio telescopes (see my publications list<\/a>), regularly pop up in the media\u00a0to talk about astronomy and space news stories (see media appearances<\/a>), give public lectures and schools workshops<\/a> all over the country (see my events list<\/a>), and give talks at teacher training events. \u00a0<\/p>\n

My passion for sharing the wonders of the universe with children of all ages has taken me from northern Scotland to outback Western Australia, via rural India, the mountains of Columbia, and cosmopolitan South Africa. I was awarded a British Empire Medal<\/a> in the 2022 Queen’s Birthday Honours list on the Platinum Jubilee for services to Girlguiding<\/a> during Covid-19, for delivering more than 60 planetarium shows<\/a> to over 1400 girls around the country. \u00a0In August 2025 I was appointed an Ambassador for Girlguiding North West England<\/a>, so now I visit Girlguiding groups in-person to do astronomy evenings.<\/p>\n

I have worked as a scientist in the UK (Lancashire<\/a>\/UCLan<\/a>, Manchester<\/a>), Australia (ICRAR<\/a>\/Curtin<\/a>) and the Netherlands (ASTRON<\/a>), and been lucky enough to observe with some of the best radio telescopes around the world, in Europe (e-MERLIN<\/a>, EVN<\/a>), India (GMRT<\/a>), the USA (VLA<\/a>, VLBA<\/a>) and Australia (LBA<\/a>, Parkes<\/a>), and even the Hubble Space Telescope<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’m a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society<\/a>, a member of the Institute of Physics<\/a>, member of the International Astronomical Union<\/a>, president of Shropshire Astronomical Society<\/a>, honorary member of Macclesfield Astronomical Society<\/a>, and Vice President of the Society for Popular Astronomy<\/a>. \u00a0I also serve on STFC’s Advisory Panel for Public Engagement<\/a>, the Office of Astronomy for Development’s<\/a> Astronomy Awards panel, am part of the joint IAU\/RAS\/AAS working group on culturally sensitive sites<\/a> and was elected to serve on the IAU Division C<\/a> (Education, Outreach and Heritage) steering committee at the 2024 General Assembly.<\/p>\n

I’m also passionate about our planet and how we can move to net zero and make our civilisation sustainable. I’m a member of Astronomers For Planet Earth<\/a>, officially Carbon Literate<\/a>, am\u00a0a trained\u00a0En-ROADS<\/a> ambassador, and aiming to embed sustainability in my teaching. I am currently a trustee of Cheshire Wildlife Trust<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When I’m not doing or teaching astronomy I am also a member of Girlguiding, an amateur radio operator (2E0NMJ), a samba drummer<\/a>, volunteer with my local parkrun<\/a>, and can often be found flying kites, hiking, climbing, swimming, cycling or running (not all at the same time). You can also find me on LinkedIn<\/a>, Mastodon<\/a>, BlueSky<\/a>, and Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

In the past I’ve been an outreach coordinator (2008-2011), a Scout Leader (2008-2011), a panel member of the ING<\/a> Time Allocation Group (2018-2021), a Councillor (2017-2020) and Vice President (2020-2022) of the RAS , served on the RAS’s Education and Outreach grants panel (2020-2021), and the RAS200 Steering Group, served two three-year terms on the organising committee for IAU<\/a> Commission C2 Communicating Astronomy with the Public<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(2015-2021),\u00a0<\/em>and many other things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My name is Megan Argo, professional astrophysicist and award-winning science communicator. I am a Reader (as of September 2025) in Astrophysics at the University of Lancashire in Preston (see my teaching page), studying galaxies in the nearby universe with radio telescopes (see my publications list), regularly pop up in the media\u00a0to talk about astronomy and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-33","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post-preview"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P7Ni4X-x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drmeganargo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drmeganargo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drmeganargo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drmeganargo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drmeganargo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/drmeganargo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1306,"href":"https:\/\/drmeganargo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33\/revisions\/1306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drmeganargo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}