AGN Echo Mapping and Mineral Clouds in Alien Atmospheres

We request funding primarily for computing infrastructure to advance our research on Echo Mapping of Active Galactic Nuclei, and on modelling of Mineral Clouds in Alien Atmospheres.
Echo Mapping of Active Galactic Nuclei - by analysis and modelling of multi-wavelength time-series datasets, including long time series of lucky imaging datasets from our robotic telescopes, we will map time delay distributions and investigate the microarcsecond structure of accretion flows into black holes in galactic centres. We aim to measure black hole masses, accretion rates, accretion disk temperature-radius profiles and luminosity distances, kinematics and ionisation structure of broad emission line regions, size and radial structure of dusty tori.
Mineral Clouds in Alien Atmospheres - we will model dust formation in cool atmospheres including processes driven by dust-dust collisions such as coagulation and charging, resolving the grain size distribution and gas-phase chemistry throughout the atmosphere, to understand the observable spectral signatures along the evolutionary sequences of extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs.

The main impact envisioned will arise from public and media interest in new research results on black holes, cosmology, and extrasolar planets. These topics attract press attention and can benefit society by setting human affairs on our small habitable planet in the context of a broader universe. A very practical impact arises from the raising of aspirations of young people to become motivated to work hard and pursue science and technology careers as a result of encountering and being inspired by our efforts to explore and understand the larger universe. Some of the new algorithms we develop for the analysis of our astronomical data, and development of astrophysical models and computer simulations that we need to interpret them, may have broader applications in other fields.