Telescope travel for Southampton Astronomy

该提议是为前往天文台的旅行提供资金。南安普顿大学的大部分研究都是试图理解“致密物体的吸积”——也就是说，物质落入黑洞或中子星和白矮星的过程。黑洞是密度很大的物体，光线无法从中逃逸。中子星是密度稍低的死恒星——典型的中子星是一个大城市大小的球体，但它的质量大约是太阳质量的1.5倍。白矮星是与地球大小和太阳质量相当的死亡恒星。当物质落入或落在这些物体上时，会释放出大量的引力能。这可以加热落入其中的物质，并使其辐射光线，有时甚至是x射线和伽马射线。有时，在这个过程中也会喷出强大的物质喷流，这些喷流通常最容易在无线电波中看到。虽然我们使用大量来自卫星的数据来观测这些天体，但我们也需要从地面射电望远镜和光学望远镜获得数据。因为银河系的大部分都在南半球的上方，我们经常不得不去澳大利亚或南非进行观测。

The proposal is to fund trips to observatories. Most of the research at Southampton involves trying to understand 'accretion onto compact objects' - that is, the process by which matter falls into black holes or onto neutron stars and white dwarfs. Black holes are objects so dense that light cannot escape from them. Neutron stars are dead stars which are only slightly less dense - a typical neutron star is a sphere about the size of a large city, but which has a mass of about 1 1/2 times the mass of the sun. White dwarfs are dead stars the size of the Earth and the mass of the sun. As matter falls into or onto these objects, a lot of gravitational energy is released. This can heat up the matter falling in and cause it to radiate light, sometimes even X-rays and gamma-rays. Sometimes, powerful jets of material are also spewed out in the process, and these jets are often easiest to see in radio waves. While we use a lot of data from satellites to observe these objects, we also need to get data from ground-based radio and optical telescopes. Because most of the Milky Way galaxy is above the Southern Hemisphere, we often have to travel to Australia or South Africa to do our observations.