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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Recent Submissions
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Constraining protoplanetary disc evolution using accretion rate and disc mass measurements: the usefulness of the dimensionless accretion parameter
(Oxford University Press, 2017-03-08)We explore how measurements of protoplanetary disc masses and accretion rates provided by surveys of star-forming regions can be analysed via the $\textit{dimensionless accretion parameter}$, which we define as the product ... -
Gaia-ESO Survey: global properties of clusters Trumpler 14 and 16 in the Carina nebula
We present the first extensive spectroscopic study of the global population in star clusters Trumpler~16, Trumpler~14 and Collinder~232 in the Carina Nebula, using data from the Gaia-ESO Survey, down to solar-mass stars. ... -
The Gaia-ESO Survey: radial distribution of abundances in the Galactic disc from open clusters and young-field stars
The spatial distribution of elemental abundances in the disc of our Galaxy gives insights both on its assembly process and subsequent evolution, and on the stellar nucleogenesis of the different elements. Gradients can be ... -
Cosmic phylogeny: reconstructing the chemical history of the solar neighbourhood with an evolutionary tree
(Oxford University Press, 2017-05)Using 17 chemical elements as a proxy for stellar DNA, we present a full phylogenetic study of stars in the solar neighbourhood. This entails applying a clustering technique that is widely used in molecular biology to ...
