A consolidated grant for Sheffield Astrophysics 2021-2024
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 led to the development of new CCD detectors, data acquisition and cooling systems, as well as stimulating a project to develop new additive manufacturing techniques in metal to build complex, rigid, lightweight components for astronomical instruments.
2. Outreach. The Sheffield astrophysics group give regular talks to schools and general audiences. We also give regular in-house masterclasses and workshops to school students and teachers. Over the last five years, members of the group have delivered more than 112 such talks/events, and been involved in 19 press releases, all based on their research activities.
Details are given in our attached Pathways to Impact document.
1. Knowledge exchange. This is primarily based on the building of the ULTRACAM and HiPERCAM instruments, which has led to the development of new CCD detectors, data acquisition and cooling systems, as well as stimulating a project to develop new additive manufacturing techniques in metal to build complex, rigid, lightweight components for astronomical instruments.
2. Outreach. The Sheffield astrophysics group give regular talks to schools and general audiences. We also give regular in-house masterclasses and workshops to school students and teachers. Over the last five years, members of the group have delivered more than 112 such talks/events, and been involved in 19 press releases, all based on their research activities.
Details are given in our attached Pathways to Impact document.
Organisations
Publications
Jones D
(2022)
The post-common-envelope binary central star of the planetary nebula Ou 5: a doubly eclipsing post-red-giant-branch system
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Kennedy M
(2022)
Measuring the mass of the black widow PSR J1555-2908
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Killestein T
(2021)
Transient-optimized real-bogus classification with Bayesian convolutional neural networks - sifting the GOTO candidate stream
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Kongsathitporn N
(2024)
Leveraging Movement Representation from Contrastive Learning for Asteroid Detection
in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Kumar A
(2025)
Insights from modelling magnetar-driven light curves of stripped-envelope supernovae
in New Astronomy
Kumar A
(2025)
Signatures of the shock interaction as an additional power source in the nebular spectra of SN 2023ixf
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Levan AJ
(2024)
Heavy-element production in a compact object merger observed by JWST.
in Nature
Littlefair S
(2024)
The donor star radial velocity curve in the cataclysmic variable GY Cnc confirms white dwarf eclipse modelling mass
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Makrygianni L
(2021)
Processing GOTO survey data with the Rubin Observatory LSST Science Pipelines II: Forced Photometry and lightcurves
in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
Mata Sánchez D
(2023)
A black widow population dissection through HiPERCAM multiband light-curve modelling
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Matthew Green
(2023)
TIC 378898110: A bright, short-period AM CVn binary in TESS
Matthew Green
(2023)
TIC 378898110: A bright, short-period AM CVn binary in TESS
Maund J
(2023)
A flash of polarized optical light points to an aspherical 'cow'
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
McHardy I
(2023)
First detection of the outer edge of an AGN accretion disc: very fast multiband optical variability of NGC 4395 with GTC/HiPERCAM and LT/IO:O
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
McLaughlin S
(2024)
Using Gaussian Processes to detect AGN flares
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
McLaughlin S
(2024)
Using Gaussian Processes to detect AGN flares
Mong Y
(2021)
Searching for Fermi GRB optical counterparts with the prototype Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO)
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Mong Y
(2023)
Self-supervised clustering on image-subtracted data with deep-embedded self-organizing map
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Morgado BE
(2023)
A dense ring of the trans-Neptunian object Quaoar outside its Roche limit.
in Nature
Morgado BE
(2024)
Author Correction: A dense ring of the trans-Neptunian object Quaoar outside its Roche limit.
in Nature
| Title | HiPERCAM/ULTRACAM observations of PSR J2051-0827 |
| Description | Optical observations of PSR J2051-0827 taken by the high-speed triple-beam CCD camera ULTRACAM on the William Herschel Telescope, and by the high-speed quintuple-beam CCD camera HiPERCAM on the Gran Telescopio Canarias. As presented in Dhillon et al. 2022 (MNRAS, in press, https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.09249). The letter after the underscore in each file name represents the observing filter for that specific file. For the ULTRACAM data, the columns are: 1) orbital phase (in rotations, with phase = 0 corresponding to pulsar's ascending node), 2) flux density (in erg cm-2 s-1 Hz-1) 3) flux density uncertainty (in erg cm-2 s-1 Hz-1) For the HiPERCAM data, the columns are: 1) MJD time 2) orbital phase (in rotations, with phase = 0 corresponding to pulsar's ascending node), 3) flux density (in erg cm-2 s-1 Hz-1) 4) flux density uncertainty (in erg cm-2 s-1 Hz-1) |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/7016531 |
| Title | HiPERCAM/ULTRACAM observations of PSR J2051-0827 |
| Description | Optical observations of PSR J2051-0827 taken by the high-speed triple-beam CCD camera ULTRACAM on the William Herschel Telescope, and by the high-speed quintuple-beam CCD camera HiPERCAM on the Gran Telescopio Canarias. As presented in Dhillon et al. 2022 (MNRAS, in press, https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.09249). The letter after the underscore in each file name represents the observing filter for that specific file. For the ULTRACAM data, the columns are: 1) orbital phase (in rotations, with phase = 0 corresponding to pulsar's ascending node), 2) flux density (in erg cm-2 s-1 Hz-1) 3) flux density uncertainty (in erg cm-2 s-1 Hz-1) For the HiPERCAM data, the columns are: 1) MJD time 2) orbital phase (in rotations, with phase = 0 corresponding to pulsar's ascending node), 3) flux density (in erg cm-2 s-1 Hz-1) 4) flux density uncertainty (in erg cm-2 s-1 Hz-1) |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/7016532 |
| Title | Line luminosities of Galactic and Magellanic Cloud Wolf-Rayet stars |
| Description | Template (optical, continuum subtracted) emission line spectra of Milky Way and Magellanic Cloud Wolf-Rayet stars, presented in Appendix B of Crowther, Rate & Bestenlehner (2023, MNRAS, in press; https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.11297). Ascii format, wavelength (Angstrom) versus monochromatic luminosity (erg/s/Angstrom). Separate templates are provided for single-only and all (single+binary) since binaries are often contaminated by (Balmer) absorption lines from companion OB stars. Highly reddened sources (primarily in Milky Way) also exhibit strong interstellar features (CaII H&K, NaI D, DIBs at 4430, 5780, 5797 Angstrom) and some datasets involved have not been corrected for atmospheric telluric features. Owing to the heterogeneous origin of individual datasets, templates cover a range of wavelength regions, and some exclude the 6070-6400 Ang region, owing to detector gaps for ANU 2.3m + DBS spectroscopy. Separate templates are provided for each galaxy with the exception of WN/C and WO stars, which are also combined into a single dataset (owing to the low total numbers involved). Templates are degraded to a uniform resolution of 10 Angstrom, with average radial velocity corrections of 284 km/s (LMC) and 162 km/s (SMC) applied. Further details are provided in the README.txt file. Please cite Crowther, Rate & Bestenlehner in publications if these templates are used in research. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/7573775 |
| Title | Line luminosities of Galactic and Magellanic Cloud Wolf-Rayet stars |
| Description | Template (optical, continuum subtracted) emission line spectra of Milky Way and Magellanic Cloud Wolf-Rayet stars, presented in Appendix B of Crowther, Rate & Bestenlehner (2023, MNRAS, in press; https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.11297). Ascii format, wavelength (Angstrom) versus monochromatic luminosity (erg/s/Angstrom). Separate templates are provided for single-only and all (single+binary) since binaries are often contaminated by (Balmer) absorption lines from companion OB stars. Highly reddened sources (primarily in Milky Way) also exhibit strong interstellar features (CaII H&K, NaI D, DIBs at 4430, 5780, 5797 Angstrom) and some datasets involved have not been corrected for atmospheric telluric features. Owing to the heterogeneous origin of individual datasets, templates cover a range of wavelength regions, and some exclude the 6070-6400 Ang region, owing to detector gaps for ANU 2.3m + DBS spectroscopy. Separate templates are provided for each galaxy with the exception of WN/C and WO stars, which are also combined into a single dataset (owing to the low total numbers involved). Templates are degraded to a uniform resolution of 10 Angstrom, with average radial velocity corrections of 284 km/s (LMC) and 162 km/s (SMC) applied. Further details are provided in the README.txt file. Please cite Crowther, Rate & Bestenlehner in publications if these templates are used in research. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/7573774 |
| Title | X-ray properties of early-type stars in the Tarantula Nebula from T-ReX |
| Description | X-ray data related to paper with same title. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/6808367 |
| Title | X-ray properties of early-type stars in the Tarantula Nebula from T-ReX |
| Description | X-ray data related to paper with same title. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/6808366 |