Astronomy Unit

A Queen Mary cosmologist has been announced as a Future Leader Fellow as part of a new government initiative to give leading researchers an opportunity to deliver global impact.

STFC's prestigious five-year fellowships are open to early career researchers of any nationality in the areas of Astronomy, Solar and Planetary Science, Cosmology, Particle Astrophysics and Particle Physics (including String Theory).

A researcher from the School of Physics and Astronomy has led a study which describes the first direct measurement of how energy is transferred from the chaotic electromagnetic fields in space to the particles that make up the solar wind, leading to the heating of interplanetary space.

Astronomers from the School of Physics and Astronomy are members of an international team that has found a planet in orbit around the second-closest star to the Sun, known as Barnard's star. 

Dr. Alkistis Pourtsidou, a lecturer in the Astronomy Unit, has been awarded a grant to study the large-scale structure of the Universe using a new radio telescope in South Africa.