Institute of Astronomy
About this community
The Institute of Astronomy (IoA) came into being in 1972 by the amalgamation of three institutions which had developed on the site. These were the Cambridge University Observatory which was established in 1823, the Solar Physics Observatory (1912) and the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy (1967).
The IoA is a department of the University of Cambridge and is engaged in teaching and research in the fields of theoretical and observational Astronomy. A wide class of theoretical problems are studied, ranging from models of quasars and of the evolution of the universe, through theories of the formation and evolution of galaxies and stars, X-ray sources and black holes.
Much observational work centres around the use by staff of large telescopes abroad and in space to study quasars, galaxies and the chemical constitution of stars. A programme on the velocities of stars is conducted using the 36-inch telescope in Cambridge. Instrumentation development is also an important area of activity, involving charge coupled devices and detector arrays for rapid recording of very faint light and the design and construction of novel spectrographs.
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X-ray Spectroscopy of Cool Core Galaxy Clusters
In this thesis, I present the results of my PhD research on the cooling flow problem in galaxy clusters. The centre of relaxed galaxy clusters has a short radiative cooling time suggesting the presence of a massive cooling ... -
How to Accurately Map the Milky Way with a Billion Sources: A Journey into the Gaia-verse
Accurately modelling the phase-space distribution of Milky Way sources relies on two vital components: unbiased distance estimators and survey selection functions. Without either, models are susceptible to significant ... -
Outflow properties of luminous quasars
Quasars, powered by accretion onto the super-massive black holes at their galaxies' centres, are capable of ejecting highly energetic outflows of gas, which can suppress star formation in the host galaxy, thereby impacting ... -
Towards Generalized Characterization of Exoplanet Atmospheres with Transit Spectroscopy
The field of exoplanetary sciences has grown from an era of detection to one of characterization. To date, over 4000 exoplanets have been discovered and over 50 of them have been observed with primary transit spectroscopy ...
