Welcome to the Keele Astrophysics Group which is part of the EPSAM Research Institute and the School of Physical and Geographical Sciences of the Faculty of Natural Sciences.

The Keele Astrophysics group currently consists of 9 academic staff members, with research interests including star formation and stellar clusters, late stellar evolution, massive stars and their impact on the early universe, the interstellar medium, binary stars, interacting binary stars, and the detection of extra-solar planets.

Keele is a member of the SALT consortium, giving access to this 10-m class facility, and of the WASP consortium, which is pursuing wide-area sky surveys and searches for transiting exoplanets. In addition our active observational programmes use many STFC and non-STFC ground-based and space-based observatories. The group is supported by an STFC rolling grant.

PhD Studentships

We have PhD studentships available to start in October 2010. If you are interested in being a PhD student in astrophysics at Keele you might like to also read about our research interests and browse the list of available Astrophysics Projects. Further information about the University can be found in the Applications section of the Graduate School website. If you require any further information or would like to visit please contact us: postgrad@astro.keele.ac.uk.

Royal Astronomical Society gives Group Achievement Award to SuperWASP

The Royal Astronomical Society has given their 2010 Group Achievement Award for Astronomy to the SuperWASP project. The UK collaboration that has so far detected 18 planets in orbit around stars other than the Sun (extrasolar planets or exoplanets). SuperWASP is a consortium of 8 academic institutions, including the University of Keele. The Award recognizes the project's world-class contribution to exoplanet science.

Nature paper announces "suicidal" planet WASP-18b.

Huge new planet tells of game of planetary billiards

See the STFC press release for the Keele-led discovery of WASP-17, the first planet found to be in a retrograde orbit.

IAU Symposium 256

Keele hosted IAU Symposium 256: The Magellanic System: Stars, Gas, and Galaxies from 28 July to 1 August 2008. Click for more

EU International Fellowship to Further Boost Astrophysics Research

Dr Raphael Hirschi, from Keele's Astrophysics Group, and Dr Takuma Suda from Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, have been awarded a £80,000 Marie Curie international incoming fellowship grant that will allow Dr Suda to join the theory and simulation team at Keele for 18 months.

Astrophysics Group Discovery among World's Top Ten

The discovery of the extra-solar planets WASP-3, WASP-4 and WASP-5, led by Keele's Astrophysics Group, has been cited by Time magazine and CNN as the 6th most important science discovery of 2007.