I am a research student in astrophysics, based at Armagh Observatory, N. Ireland and jointly supervised by Armagh and Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London.
Most of my time is spent either going to fanastic places in the world to use telescopes or analysing the data obtained from those observations. I have been lucky to have used several telescopes on La Palma in the Canary Island and at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.
My research primarily involves short period stellar variability, this work concentrates on binary star systems and stellar pulsators. I am heavily involved in two projects.
The RATS Project is a search for a particular type of binary star with an extremely short orbital period (typically less than 60 mins) known as an AM CVn stars. I lead the strand of the project involving data reduction and analysis. This involves the identification of variable sources and follow-up observations. We currently have light curves of over 3 million stars of which over 150,000 are variables on time-scales of less than 2 hours. One of my roles is to develop software with which to identify potential AM CVn systems.
The RATS observations, which take an observation of a field every minute for two hours, cover over 30 square degrees of the sky. The survey is not limited to AM CVn stars. We find hundreds of eclipsing and contact binaries, dozens of flare stars and many other exotic variables such as X-ray binaries, sdB stars, roAp stars and pulsating white dwarfs. We are collaberating with several other teams to provide them with data products with which they are looking at objects as diverse as minor planets and quasars. If you are interesting in gaining access to any of the data, let me know!
I also lead the first study into the long term variability of the known AM CVn systems. We get weekly observations of all the AM CVn systems visible from the northern hemisphere using the Liverpool Telescope. We have been able to follow-up outbursts seen in these systems using the Swift satellite. An interesting result in our ongoing analysis is that one such system undergoes outbursts on a regular 60 day period.
My publications are listed on The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System