Visiting Fellowships at Durham

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This application seeks support to continue the successful visitors programme that we have conducted at Durham since 1983. This application covers the entire spectrum of astronomical research at Durham which includes extragalactic astronomy, cosmology, astronomical instrumentation, gamma-ray astronomy and high energy astrophysics. The current grant has supported 97 visitors over a 2.5 year period and had led to 111 joint refereed publications involving Durham researchers and visitors. Examples of research projects involving visitors are: the Virgo Consortium's programme of simulations of the formation of structure in the universe; theoretical modelling of galaxy formation; observational studies of young massive galaxies undergoing huge starbursts; investigation of accretion processes onto black holes of a wide range of sizes, from a few to a billion solar masses; the effects of the growth of supermassive black holes on forming galaxies; observations of groups and clusters at early stages of formation; the detection and interpretation of very high energy gamma rays from exotic objects including microquasars; the design of new instruments for existing telescopes like the Very Large Telescopes and future ones like the projected Extremely Large Telescope.