Telescope travel for Southampton Astronomy

该提案是为前往观测站提供资金。南安普顿的大部分研究都涉及试图理解“致密物体上的吸积”--也就是物质福尔斯落入黑洞或中子星和白色矮星的过程。黑洞是密度大到光无法从中逃逸的物体。中子星是密度稍低的死星--一颗典型的中子星星是一个大城市大小的球体，但其质量约为太阳质量的1.5倍。白色矮星是一种死亡恒星，大小与地球相当，质量与太阳相当。当物质福尔斯落入或落在这些物体上时，大量的引力能被释放出来。这可以加热落入其中的物质，使其辐射光，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射流，这些射流通常最容易在无线电波中看到。虽然我们使用来自卫星的大量数据来观察这些物体，但我们还需要从地面无线电和光学望远镜获得数据。由于银河系的大部分位于南半球上方，因此我们经常必须前往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.