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Research

Physics and Astronomy

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The Department of Physics & Astronomy is a member of CEPSAR, the University’s interdisciplinary Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space and Astronomical Research, and the Biomedical Research Network, itself part of the University’s strategic research initiative in research into health and medicine.  The department has five research groups:
  • The Astronomy Research Group.
  • Atomic, Molecular and Optical Research Group.
  • Physics Applied to Medicine Research Group.
  • Physics Education Research Group.
  • Plasma Science and Engineering Research Group.

Key facts

  • Our work is at the forefront of modern science, with CEPSAR research being ranked in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise within the upper quartile for both 3* and 4* categories, with 70 per cent of its research ranked as ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’ and 95 per cent being at least ‘recognised internationally’ in terms of originality, significance and rigour.
  • Research is funded from a wide range of national and international funding agencies, including the European Union. The Astronomy Research Group holds a Rolling Grant supporting its research programme, funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
  • The department accepts both full-time and part-time PhD Students. Support for full-time students is available through several funding bodies, including STFC, EPSRC and the OU. In 2011/12 the intake of new students will be about 7. Students are recruited both nationally (some grants are restricted to UK nationals) and internationally with, currently, a large number of our students coming from the EU.

Facilities

Astronomy: Access to major ground-based and space-based telescope facilities, such as the ESO Telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope HST, superWASP, the European Space Agency HERSCHEL and PLANCK satellites, LOFAR, SALT, eMERLIN, Isaac Newton Group telescopes, AAT, AKARI, Spitzer, XMM, BLAST, with heavy involvement in the UKIDSS and into JCMT legacy surveys.

Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics Research Group and Plasma Science and Engineering Physics Research Group: Access to a suite of state-of-the-art equipment in recently opened laboratories on the OU campus and access to synchrotron facilities both in the UK (the Diamond Synchrotron facility on STFC Harwell) and in Aarhus (Denmark) and, through international networks, access to a wide range of complementary experimental facilities for astrochemistry, planetary science, plasma and molecular physics. Access to the university’s computing cluster.

Further information

If you have an enquiry specific to this research area please contact:

Name:
Astrid Peterkin
Email:
science-phd-enquiries@open.ac.uk
Phone:
+44 (0)1908 659845

For general enquiries please contact the Research Degrees Team via the link under 'Your questions' further down the page.

Publications

Research publications by Open University staff are available through Open Research Online (ORO), the university's repository of research publications and other research outputs. ORO can be searched or browsed by staff name or subject.

The following list, generated from ORO, provides a flavour of the most recently published work in Physics and Astronomy: