Support for telescope travel for Southampton Astronomy research group

这项提议是资助去天文台收集科学数据的旅行。南安普顿的大部分研究都涉及到试图理解“致密物体上的吸积”--即物质落入黑洞或中子星和白矮星的过程。黑洞是密度如此之高的物体，光线无法逃脱。中子星是密度稍低的死星--典型的中子星是一个大城市大小的球体，但其质量约为太阳的1.5倍。白矮星是大小相当于地球、质量相当于太阳的死恒星。当物质落入或落在这些天体上时，会释放出大量的引力能量。这会使落入其中的物质升温，并导致其辐射光线，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，这些喷流往往是最容易在无线电波中看到的。我们还研究超新星-宇宙爆炸-这是宇宙中重元素的来源，也可以用来研究宇宙学和暗能量。虽然我们使用来自卫星的大量数据来观测这些天体，但我们也需要从地面射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空，我们经常不得不前往澳大利亚、智利或南非进行观测。

The proposal is to fund trips to observatories to gather scientific data. 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.We also study supernovae - cosmic explosions - which are the source of heavy elements in the universe and can also be used to study cosmology and dark energy.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, Chile or South Africa to do our observations.