Astrophysics and Observational Cosmology

Using observatories, theory and simulations to study the small to the vast - including stars, active galactic nuclei and cosmology.

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Postgraduate research

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Research group focus

Our group uses a wide range of astronomical observatories to answer fundamental questions about the Universe. This includes:

studying how galaxies form and evolve
measuring the properties of compact objects like neutron stars
evaluating parameters of cosmological models
testing theories of gravity
studying the oscillations inside stars

Research impact

The world’s biggest telescopes

We use the world’s biggest telescopes such as:

the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT)
the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA)
the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

With these telescopes we use spatially-resolved measurements of the gas inside galaxies to study how supermassive black holes alter the evolution of their host galaxies. They also allow us to measure how distant galaxies rotate. This helps our group assess how the dark matter, star and gas content of galaxies change as they evolve through time.

With these science goals in mind, we're further preparing for observations with the Extremely Large Telescope. It will be the world’s biggest optical/near-infrared telescope for the foreseeable future.

Precision measurement

We use highly precise measurements to study objects such as neutron stars and measure stellar oscillations (astroseismology). For example, the quality of space observations, such as from the CoRoT, Kepler/K2 and TESS space telescopes, provide us with an excellent opportunity to study physics that is not currently well understood for massive stars.

Key collaborators

On much larger scales our group uses observations of millions of galaxies to test and refine cosmological models. We do this with precise measurements of large-scale structures and the weak lensing effect. Towards this, our team are involved with: