Galactic Astronomy at the University of Hertfordshire

赫特福德郡大学银河天文学

• 批准号: ST/G002622/1
• 负责人: Hugh Jones
• 金额: $ 230.74万
• 依托单位: University of Hertfordshire
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2009 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ST%2FG002622%2F1
• 关键词: Galactic; Astronomy; University; Hertfordshire

The Milky Way is our home galaxy. It is accompanied by smaller satellite galaxies, the most important ones are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The evolution of galaxies is closely linked to the evolution of the stars they contain. The matter in galaxies in the form of gas is the raw material for the formation of stars and planetary systems. Our group investigates the first stars born in the Milky Way over 10 billion years ago - a phase only directly observable now in very distant galaxies at high redshift. Also with a view to understanding what the young Milky Way was like, we study stars known as white dwarfs that are the extremely faint stellar remnants from these early days. Some white dwarfs reside in binaries, which are expected to be important sources of gravitational waves, and a few of them will eventually merge and explode as supernovae (another path way by which stars feed back into the chemistry and dynamics of interstellar matter). To solve problems in how stars age to become these stellar remnants, our group investigates stars passing through the preceding extreme red giant evolutionary phase, both in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds -- this is the moment when stars return matter to the interstellar gas during a strong superwind phase. The returned gas is chemically enriched by nuclear fusion that has gone on inside the stars and will be re-cycled to form the next generation of stars. The Milky Way and its satellites are our only chance to have a close-up look at these processes. Long wavelength observations (made in the sub-mm and infrared) allow us to investigate the birth of stars and brown dwarfs. We are leading a new generation of surveys of our Milky Way Galaxy that are to designed to study the formation of stars from their initial condensation under gravity from vast clouds of cold gas to their emergence as stars powered by nuclear fusion reactions. The new surveys will detect hundreds of regions where stars are being formed, both in large clusters and in isolation. With this large dataset we can use a statistical approach to determine the different ways that stars can form in the Galaxy as a whole and the timescales involved in the process. We perform systematic radial velocity searches of nearby stars to discover planets and then follow some of these up with high resolution imaging and spectroscopy in order to discern their atmospheric properties. We especially target low mass stars both using Doppler Wobble and by looking for planets periodically eclipsing their parent star. During the period of the grant we expect to make the first detections of Earth-mass planets in the habitable zones of the closest stars. In addition we are identifying populations of nearby youthful M stars which we will target with existing and new high resolution facilities to open up potential to directly image the details of other Solar Systems at separations as small as that of the Earth to Sun distance. We also discover, follow-up and model the properties of the coolest failed stars (brown dwarfs) whose temperatures and properties offer substantial overlap with Solar System planets and insight into planets in orbit around other stars as well as on their own.

银河系是我们的家。它伴随着较小的卫星星系，最重要的是大麦哲伦云和小麦哲伦云。星系的演化与它们所包含的恒星的演化密切相关。星系中以气体形式存在的物质是恒星和行星系统形成的原材料。我们的研究小组研究了100多亿年前在银河系中诞生的第一批恒星--这一阶段现在只能在非常遥远的星系中以高红移直接观察到。同样为了了解年轻的银河系是什么样子，我们研究了被称为白色矮星的恒星，它们是早期非常微弱的恒星残骸。一些白色矮星存在于双星系统中，它们被认为是引力波的重要来源，其中一些最终会合并并爆炸为超新星（恒星反馈到星际物质的化学和动力学的另一种途径）。为了解决恒星如何老化成为这些恒星残骸的问题，我们的研究小组研究了银河系和麦哲伦云中经过之前极端红巨星演化阶段的恒星-这是恒星在强烈的超级风阶段将物质返回星际气体的时刻。返回的气体通过恒星内部的核聚变进行化学浓缩，并将再循环形成下一代恒星。银河系及其卫星是我们近距离观察这些过程的唯一机会。长波长观测（在亚毫米和红外线）使我们能够研究恒星和褐矮星的诞生。我们正在领导新一代的银河系调查，旨在研究恒星的形成，从它们在重力下从巨大的冷气体云开始凝结到它们作为核聚变反应提供动力的恒星出现。新的巡天将探测到数百个恒星正在形成的区域，无论是在大型星团中还是孤立的。有了这个庞大的数据集，我们可以使用统计方法来确定恒星在整个银河系中形成的不同方式以及这个过程所涉及的时间尺度。我们对附近的恒星进行系统的径向速度搜索，以发现行星，然后通过高分辨率成像和光谱学跟踪其中的一些行星，以辨别它们的大气特性。我们特别针对低质量的恒星都使用多普勒摆动和寻找行星周期性日食其母星星。在赠款期间，我们希望在最近恒星的可居住区首次探测地球质量的行星。此外，我们正在识别附近年轻的M星，我们将利用现有的和新的高分辨率设施来瞄准这些恒星，以开辟直接成像其他太阳系细节的潜力，这些恒星的距离与地球到太阳的距离一样小。我们还发现，跟踪和模拟最冷的失败恒星（褐矮星）的性质，其温度和性质与太阳系行星有很大的重叠，并深入了解围绕其他恒星运行的行星以及它们自己。

项目成果

Herschel -ATLAS: The dust energy balance in the edge-on spiral galaxy UGC 4754

赫歇尔 -ATLAS：边缘螺旋星系中的尘埃能量平衡 UGC 4754

• DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201014644
• 发表时间: 2010
• 期刊: Astronomy and Astrophysics
• 影响因子: 6.5
• 作者: Baes M

Herschel -ATLAS: Dust temperature and redshift distribution of SPIRE and PACS detected sources using submillimetre colours

Herschel -ATLAS：使用亚毫米颜色检测 SPIRE 和 PACS 检测源的尘埃温度和红移分布

• DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201014586
• 发表时间: 2010
• 期刊: Astronomy and Astrophysics
• 影响因子: 6.5
• 作者: Amblard A

Surfing the photon noise: New techniques to find low-mass planets around M dwarfs

驾驭光子噪声：寻找 M 型矮星周围低质量行星的新技术

• DOI: 10.1002/asna.201211775
• 发表时间: 2013
• 期刊: Astronomische Nachrichten
• 影响因子: 0.9
• 作者: Anglada-Escudé G

A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri

• DOI: 10.1038/nature19106
• 发表时间: 2016-08-25
• 期刊: NATURE
• 影响因子: 64.8
• 作者: Anglada-Escude, Guillem;Amado, Pedro J.;Zechmeister, Mathias
• 通讯作者: Zechmeister, Mathias

A dynamically-packed planetary system around GJ 667C with three super-Earths in its habitable zone

• DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201321331
• 发表时间: 2013-08-01
• 期刊: ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS
• 影响因子: 6.5
• 作者: Anglada-Escude, Guillem;Tuomi, Mikko;Jones, Hugh R. A.
• 通讯作者: Jones, Hugh R. A.