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Research
University of Kent missions and project involvement
INTAS. CAPS is involved in a European wide research collaboration aimed at understanding the intricate structures ejected from young stars. HELIX-2 is the second INTAS-funded programme which has involved astronomers from Russia, Armenia, Germany, France, Portugal, Ireland and the UK.
Stardust. Extensive work on the NASA Stardust space mission is carried out by Prof. Burchell.
Smart-1. Laboratory simulations of the SMART-1 impact were performed at the University of Kent. The simulations were performed by M.J. Burchell and M.J.Cole.
Herschel. Hi-GAL is a survey of the Galactic Plane to be carried out with the Herschel Space Observatory. Herschel will be the biggest far-infrared space observatory ever flown (with a 3.5 m mirror) and is set to launch in late 2008. The University of Kent is playing a role in the design of the Hi-GAL survey, which will observe the entire Galactic Plane in 5 infrared bands.
Spitzer programmes. In collaboration, CAPS is involved in a growing number of Spitzer Space Telescope programmes to observe protostars and their outflows. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is a space-based infrared observatory, part of NASA's Great Observatories program.
ESO's Very Large Telescope. Open Time VLT (CRIRES; PI: Smith)) and VLTI/AMBER interferometry (Co-I) data have been obtained for young stars and their environments and are currently being analysed.
SALT. Michael Smith is leading a Star Formation Team to exploit SALT, the South African Large Telescope. The first usable data is providing interesting results.
UKIDSS. UKIDSS is the next generation near-infrared sky survey, the successor to 2MASS. UKIDSS began in May 2005 and will survey 7500 square degrees of the Northern sky. The survey instrument is WFCAM on the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii. We are now analysing vast quantities of data.
ASTRO-F. Kent is associated with the Japanese-led ASTRO-F mission, winning a prestigious International prize. ASTRO-F is the first all sky far-infrared survey since the IRAS satellite. It is expected that the satellite will detect 10 million galaxies. star formation bursts, map the galactic plane, tracie the large-scale structure of nearby star forming regions; detect brown dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood and protostars.
H2EX. H2EX is a proposed space mission dedicated to the observation of molecular hydrogen. H2 is the most abundant molecule in the Universe. Its history is closely linked to that of star formation and galaxy evolution. Because H2 has been mostly hiding from direct detection, there is a diversity of, sometimes controversial, views on the physical state and the occurence of the molecule in the Universe. With european and american collaborators we are revising a proposal for an explorer space mission, H2EX, dedicated to survey H2 in its mid-infrared pure rotational lines.