Visitors Programme - University of Central Lancashire, Centre for Astrophysics

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Astrophysics research at the University of Central Lancashire is concentrated within three broad themes: Extragalactic, Stellar, and Solar Physics. International leadership and participation in multi-institute collaborations requires a vibrant Visitors Programme, in order to sustain a competitive advantage, cross-fertilise skillsets with overseas expertise, and foster new and exciting collaborative links when time-critical targets of opportunity arise. Visitor Programmes are particularly cost-effective in this regard; the efficacy (and importance) of our previous grant is demonstrated graphically by the fact that 1/3 of the Centre for Astrophysics 200 refereed publications since 2003 were written in collaboration with the 35 visitors supported by the grant. This application seeks to expand upon our previously-supported Visitors Programme, to reflect our rapid and significant growth in High Performance Computational Astrophysics, while maintaining support for our existing international links within the stellar and solar physics themes. Examples of research projects involving visitors include fully self-consistent cosmological chemical and dynamical simulations of galaxy formation; age-dating and chemical deconstruction of ancient galaxies throughout the Universe; tracking the origin sites of the chemical elements and isotopes surrounding us today; understanding the growth of supermassive black holes through observations and models of their neighbouring visible star cluster companions; probing the interiors of stars using sound waves; uncovering the mysterious origin of coronal mass ejections; exploring the link between coronal holes on the Sun, their solar winds, and their interaction with the Earth's atmosphere.