A former Newtown man who worked at the town’s Morrisons supermarket as a student to help pay for his university studies and now works for NASA in Boston, USA, has been part of a global team of scientists to find it does in fact rain on Saturn.
Dr James O’Donoghue, who went to Maesyrhandir Primary School and Newtown High School, has played a major role in discovering that it’s raining on Saturn and the giant planet's amazing rings are apparently the cause.
James, working with a team of scientists, has found that tiny ice particles that compose the planet's distinctive rings are continuously eroded away and then deposited into the planet's upper atmosphere as ‘ring rain’.
"We estimate that one Olympic sized swimming pool of water is falling on Saturn every day” said James, author of the study which first appeared in Nature Magazine.
“This is actually a minute amount, given the size of Saturn and its ring system.
“It would take several billion years to extinguish the rings at that rate; we were amazed to discover that the water input over just eight hours was visible in Saturn’s atmosphere from ground-based telescopes.”
This discovery was made whilst he was a PhD. Student at the University of Leicester. He previously studied at Aberystwyth University after leaving Newtown High School.
His Mother Wendy and two sisters, Charlotte and Victoria lived in Newtown before moving to Shrewsbury.
His grandmother Rona said: “We are very proud of James, he has worked extremely hard to realise his dream, he has always had a keen interest in science and astronomy.”
He worked at Morrison’s supermarket whilst he was a student to earn money towards his studies.
He now works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a post-doctoral researcher based at Boston University, Massachusetts. USA.
He has visited observatories all over the world to help setup ground based telescopes”
