Astronomy | Research Degrees

England

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Accessibility statement

An image to illustrate the Astronomy research area

We have international programmes of observational, theoretical, laboratory-based and mission-based astronomy research, focusing on a number of the key science questions of European and UK astronomy, including:

We also carry out research in the area of astronomy education.

Each year we expect to recruit full-time postgraduate students to typically 3-5 advertised research projects, on fully funded studentships (providing fees and stipend). Part-time, self-funded postgraduate students on self-defined projects are only appointed in exceptional circumstances, where the projects closely match the interests and activities of staff members.

Astronomy is one of five research disciplines within the School of Physical Sciences and has close links with Planetary and Space Sciences and with The Centre for Electronic Imaging.

Our full-time research students are based at our Milton Keynes campus; for details of residence requirements for different modes of study see Full-time study and Part-time study.

We have leading roles in many major international projects and facilities, including JWST programmes, LOFAR, JCMT Legacy Surveys, and the Vera C Rubin Observatory and LSST. We run the OpenScience Observatories, a collection of telescopes and other instruments on Mount Teide, Tenerife.

We are members of the UK SALT Consortium, which owns a 5 per cent share in the 11-metre Southern African Large Telescope. We are a partner in the SuperWASP consortium that operates two robotic sky-patrol camera systems (one in La Palma, one at Sutherland Observatory, South Africa), We are co-investigators on the forthcoming ESA Euclid space telescope and have involvement with the forthcoming ESA PLATO and ARIEL and Athena space telescopes.

We use many international facilities, from ground-based observatories (e.g. ALMA, AAO, ESO) to space telescopes (JWST, HST, Spitzer, XMM-Newton), and are involved in the planning and preparation for future international facilities.

Observational studies are complemented by state-of-the-art laboratories in astrochemistry which are integrated with European and US astrochemistry and planetary science laboratory networks. We are also a partner institution in the South East Physics Network (SEPNet), ensuring both a coordinated training plan for postgraduate students and rapid dissemination of their research findings to a very broad community.

All this research exploits the University’s IMPACT computing cluster for data analysis and modelling.