📣 Help Shape the Future of UKRI's Gateway to Research (GtR)

We're improving UKRI's Gateway to Research and are seeking your input! If you would be interested in being interviewed about the improvements we're making and to have your say about how we can make GtR more user-friendly, impactful, and effective for the Research and Innovation community, please email gateway@ukri.org.

A consolidated grant for Sheffield Astrophysics 2018-2021

Lead Research Organisation: University of Sheffield
Department Name: Physics and Astronomy

Abstract

The aim of this proposal is to support a programme of internationally excellent research in astrophysics at Sheffield, building on our recent research achievements, and tied to the exploitation of leading international facilities supported by STFC and UKSA.

Planned Impact

The main ways in which our research makes an impact outside the academic community is via our knowledge exchange and outreach activities. To summarise:

1. Knowledge exchange. This is primarily based on the building of the ULTRACAM and HiPERCAM instruments, which has lead to the development of new new CCD detector, data acquisition and cooling systems, as well as stimulating a project to develop new techniques to use 3D printing build rigid, lightweight support structure for astronomical instruments.

2. Outreach. Over the last 5 years members of the Sheffield astrophsyics group have delivered 126 talks to schools and astronomical societies, have held 70 in-house workshops for school students, and been involved in 15 press releases, all based on their research activities.

Details are given in our Impact Plan that is included as an attachment.

Publications

10 25 50

publication icon
Akter S (2019) Finding binary star fractions in any distribution in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

publication icon
Aranzana E (2018) Fourier time lags in the dwarf nova SS Cygni in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

publication icon
Arnold B (2019) A method to analyse velocity structure in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

publication icon
Baran A (2018) Pulsations and eclipse-time analysis of HW Vir in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

publication icon
Bernhard E (2019) Inferring a difference in the star-forming properties of lower versus higher X-ray luminosity AGNs in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters

 
Description The award was used to fund a wide range of research that led to substantial progress in (a) understanding the links between the evolution actively accreting black holes and their host galaxies via far-IR observations taken with the Herschel satellite; (b) the way in which the most massive stars explode at the ends of their lives and the environments in which they do so; (c) the time variability of a range of astrophysical objects, and in particular compact stellar remnants.
Exploitation Route The outcomes can and have been used to inform future research projects and applications for observing time
on highly-oversubscribed observing facilities.
Sectors Education

Other

 
Description The findings have been used to inform a variety of outreach activities, including talks to schools and amateur astronomy societies socities, as well as public lectures.
First Year Of Impact 2018
Sector Other
Impact Types Cultural

Societal

 
Title Parameters of 15 Cataclysmic Variables 
Description VizieR online Data Catalogue associated with article published in journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society with title ' The evolutionary status of Cataclysmic Variables: eclipse modelling of 15 systems.' (bibcode: 2019MNRAS.486.5535M) 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2022 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/MNRAS/486/5535