GALACTIC ASTRONOMY AT MSSL

This is the homepage of the Galactic Astronomy group at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory. We invite you to browse through our web pages for an overview of the work we do here.

Artist's impression of a cataclysmic variable © 1996 by Mark A. Garlick

OUR MAJOR TOPICS OF INTEREST ARE: 

ULTRA-COMPACT BINARIES

NEUTRON STARS

CATACLYSMIC VARIABLES

X-RAY BINARIES

MICRO-QUASARS



Members of The Galactic Group:

Christian Bridge
Mark Cropper
Cynthia James
Keith Mason
Tracey Poole
Gavin Ramsay
Roberto Soria
Kinwah Wu
Silvia Zane


A main area of interest is observations obtained using XMM-Newton which the lab was heavily involved in building:

XMM projects:
The X-ray satellite XMM-Newton was launched in Dec 1999. MSSL has access to a lot of observing time on this satellite since it helped build the Optical Monitor and the RGS. Copied of these papers can be found in our pre-print web page.



Another area of research is using data taken using the ESA STJ camera:

Superconducting Tunneling Junction (STJ) detectors detect both the energy and arrival time of every photon. ESA have built a camera using STJs as its detector and is unique in that it works in the optical band. We have observations of 5 eclipsing magnetic CVs made using these detectors. A paper describing the observations of one of those, UZ For, has just been accepted by MNRAS and can be found in our pre-print page. Using these data we are modelling the brightness along the accretion stream.

See the Beginner's Guide to CVs for an introduction to cataclysmic variables. We also have a `Blue Peter' guide to stars.

We hope the following pages may be of some use for those folk interested in magnetic CVs:

The MSSL Polar Page
This page is under construction, but here we give you all currently known polars with their positions, magnetic field strength etc. Additions or corrections are very welcome. Koji Mukai at Goddard has an Intermediate Polar Page that is also worth a look. We also have a table which shows the classification scheme of accreting binary stars - imagine a white dwarf accreting material from a giant star - what is that kind of system called? Check it out!



We also have copies of a couple of theses:


MSSL home pages:

  • MSSL Astrophysics Group home page
  • Mullard Space Science Laboratory home page

  • Thanks go to Mark A. Garlick for the permisson to use some of his excellent pictures of CVs. All are © Mark Garlick.


    This page

    Maintained by Gavin Ramsay (gtbr@mssl.ucl.ac.uk).
    Last modified 15th Jan 2001