Interferometric Studies of Zodiacal Light

This describes the fruits of research into Brian's university research at Imperial College. There are two published papers and one related PhD thesis (Brian's thesis was never published). Given the full references, you should be able to get these through inter-library-loan from most university physics department libraries, and possibly through a good library in a big city.

BTW - Unless you're an astronomy major, you probably won't understand a word!

(i) NATURE Volume 240 December 15th 1972 pp401-402
"MgI Emission in the Night Sky Spectrum"
T.R.Hicks, B.H.May and N.K.Reay.

This is a short article (just over a page) describing work done at Izana (Tenerife) during 09/71, 10/71 and 04/72 of "spectral scans of up to 4Angstrom wide centred on the MgI wavelength. The aim was to study zodiacal light"
(ii) Monthly Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society (1974), 166, pp439-448
"An Investigation of the Motion of Zodiacal Dust Particles - I"
(Radial Velocity Measurements on Fraunhofer Line profiles)
T.R.Hicks, B.H.May and N.K.Reay.
(Communicated by J.Ring [He was Brian's supervisor])
Received August 3 1973

ABSTRACT: An experiment to record the spectrum of the Zodiacal Light in the neighbourhood of the MgI absorption line (5183.6Angstrom) is described. Measurements were made of the Doppler Shift imposed on the absorption line by the motion of the interplanetary dust particles. Observations were concentrated on the ecliptic plane, spectra being obtained at lower elongation angles from the Sun than previously achieved, and also over the entire range of high elongations including the Gegenschein.
(iii) "A Servo-Controlled Fabry Perot Interferometer: It's development and use in Astronomy"
Thomas R. Hicks, PhD Thesis University of London 1974

Dr Hicks was a fellow member of Brian's research group. The other two papers are jointly written (Ken Reay - who still has an office at IC - seems to be a co-supervisor along with Prof Jim Ring - who also still has an office and a photo in the staff's rogues gallery but has retired [all of this was written in 1989, and has undoubtedly changed since then])

Brian is referenced several times during the thesis - e.g. in the preface: "The observations were performed by Dr N.K.Reay, Mr B.H.May, Mr R.J.Scaddan and myself during the course of three observing sessions. Most of the reduction of the data collected and all of the interpretation of the results from the first two sessions was performed by Mr B.H.May as part of a PhD thesis to be submitted to the University of London."

Also, one of the references at the end of the thesis is to "May, B.H. University of London PhD Thesis (in preparation)". This never saw the light of day.

One wonders what Dr. Hicks would think if he knew bits of his thesis were being spread around the World Wide Web after 21 years!

'Physics Abstracts' and the 'Science Citation Index' couldn't find any others, and Heather says there aren't any.