Welcome to the Keele Astrophysics Group which is part of the EPSAM Research Institute and the School of Physical and Geographical Sciences of the Faculty of Natural Sciences.

The Keele Astrophysics group currently consists of 10 academic staff members, with research interests including star formation and stellar clusters, late stellar evolution, massive stars and their impact on the early universe, the interstellar medium, binary stars, interacting binary stars, and the detection of extra-solar planets.

Postgraduate elected to RAS Council

Astrophysics PhD Student Mandy Bailey has been elected to the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). Mandy is a mature student studying the small scale structure of the Interstellar Medium (ISM) by observing the Diffuse Interstellar Bands (DIBs) in the spectra of early type stars.

As an elected RAS Councillor, Mandy will work alongside professional astronomers and geophysicists on the RAS Council and sub committees to help the RAS achieve its aims of encouraging and promoting the study of astronomy, solar-system science, and geophysics.

BBC Stargazing LIVE

Keele Observatory took part in BBC2's Stargazing LIVE. This is a season of events and programmes fronted nationally by Professor Brian Cox, and hosted at Keele by the Astrophysics Group and the Keele Observatory Crew. Keele's contribution started with the partial solar eclipse as the Sun rose on the morning of the 4th January. Unfortunately the sky was cloudy but a number of visitors turned up. The evenings of 4th and 5th January were very busy and a couple of hundred members of the public visited the Observatory, each taking away a "Stargazing LIVE" guide. Members of the public, including a large number of children, had glimpses of Jupiter through the cloud, were given a tour of the Observatory facilities, and had advice on purchasing and setting up their own telescopes.

The Keele event was covered by local media, including a feature on BBC's "Midlands Today". Keele Observatory is open to the public every Tuesday evening and Saturday afternoon.

Stars Just got Bigger

Using a combination of instruments on the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, one weighing at birth more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, or twice as much as the currently accepted limit of 150 solar masses. The existence of these monsters - millions of times more luminous than the Sun - may provide an answer to the question "how massive can stars be?"

A team of astronomers, including Raphael Hirschi, Astrophysics at Keele, used ESO's Very Large Telescope, as well as archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, to study two young clusters of stars, NGC 3603 and RMC 136a in detail. The team found several stars with surface temperatures over 40,000 degrees - more than seven times hotter than our Sun and a few tens of times larger and several million times brighter.

Follow this link for further details

Royal Astronomical Society gives Group Achievement Award to SuperWASP

The Royal Astronomical Society has given their 2010 Group Achievement Award for Astronomy to the SuperWASP project. The UK collaboration that has so far detected 18 planets in orbit around stars other than the Sun (extrasolar planets or exoplanets). SuperWASP is a consortium of 8 academic institutions, including the University of Keele. The Award recognizes the project's world-class contribution to exoplanet science.