The dwarf planet Haumea is the parent of a collisional family that includes its two moons, Hi'iaka and Namaka. The orbits of the moons of this strange dwarf planet are currently lined up so that from our view here on Earth, they eclipse Haumea itself. This alignment will persist only for another year or so, then not recur for another 300 years. As part of an international collaboration, I am trying to observe these rare events: they could allow us to very accurately calculate the shape of Haumea, which spins so fast that it is warped out into the form of a rugby ball.

As the solar wind bombards the surface of our Moon, it embeds fragments of the raw stuff of the Sun into particles of metal in the lunar soil. Some soil was brought back by the Apollo missions. By analysing these tiny particles with an ion microprobe, we can measure the proportions they hold of the two rare types of elemental oxygen. These proportions are different between the asteroids and the rocky planets. Will this measurement from the primordial source, the Sun, be able to change our understanding of how the planets formed? With Trevor Ireland of the Research School of Earth Sciences, I analysed samples of lunar soil returned by the Apollo missions.

The arid and windswept McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica are carpeted with the polygons of patterned ground, a geological formation that is also seen on the northern plains of the planet Mars. The polygons, photographed here by me in Victoria Valley, develop over thousands of years.

My Honours research involved nine weeks of fieldwork in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica with K054, split between Victoria Valley and Beacon Valley. I worked to understand the influence that buried masses of ice have on the development of patterned ground. By looking below the surface with geophysical methods, we can map out the buried ice and the wedges of ice that grow downward to separate out each polygon. This will help us to better understand the patterned ground of Mars.