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Researcher
Training
Current Ph.D. Students
- Sarah Bird is studying globular cluster
dynamics in the Milky Way; doing distance measurements to galaxies
using HST; and studying the halos of elliptical galaxiesi with the VLT. Sarah began her Ph.D. studies in August
2008.
- Juliet Datson is searching for Solar twins, as well as
studying the star formation
history of the Milky Way disc.
Juliet began her Ph.D. studies in February
2009.
Former Ph.D. Students
- Esko Gardner studied the orbits of
disk stars in the Galaxy --- with emphasis
on irregularities in the Galactic potential
--- in particular, the Galactic bar. He has also looked
in detail at how comets enter the inner Solar system from the Oort
cloud, due to the Galactic tidal field. Esko completed
his Ph.D. studies in July 2010.
- Luca Casagrande
is studying Helium in K
dwarf stars, with a view to mapping out the development
of Helium
in the cosmos. Luca completed his Ph.D. in April
2008, and will be heading for a postdoc position in Munich
with Martin Asplund.
- Janne
Holopainen is using various observational means to
constrain new ideas on the nature of dark matter in the
Galaxy. Janne completed his PhD in 2007, and is now
pursuing other professional interests.
- Chris
Thom (Swinburne
University of Technology) searched for distant
stars in the Galactic halo, with which to constrain the
distances of so-called "high velocity clouds" of gas
covering much of the sky; as a bonus he was able to
examine the kinematics
of the Galactic halo with these same stars. Chris
finished his thesis in May 2006, and has taken up a
post-doc position in Chicago.
- Rami Rekola
looked at methods to determine distances
to galaxies in the local group and a little beyond
(i.e. in the extended local group). Rami completed his
thesis work in 2005 and is presently a postdoctoral fellow at
Tuorla Observatory.
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Johan Holmberg (Lund
Observatory). Johan used the Hipparcos
satellite to measure the amount of dark
matter in the disk of the Galaxy (we didn't find
any!). Johan completed his thesis in 2001, and has had
post-doc positions in Copenhagen, Lund, Turku and has
returned to Lund after a position working on the GAIA
mission in Heidelberg.
M.Sc. students
Former M.Sc. students
-
Eira Kotoneva looked a sample of low surface
brightness galaxies and determined rotation curves from H
alpha observations. Eira completed her masters thesis in
1999, and went on to do a PhD at Tuorla.
- Janne Holopainen
used existing proper motion surveys to put limits on the
amount of faint white dwarfs which could make up the dark
matter in the Galactic halo --- he found that the white
dwarfs discovered to date contribute
very little to the dark matter. Janne finished his
masters work in April 2003, and is presently working
toward his PhD.
- Andrew Mattingly (Swinburne University
of Technology) used the Geneva-Copenhagen Survey of
the Solar Neighbourhood, computing instanteous and longer
term orbital parameters for the stars in a model of the
Galactic potential. Andrew completed his masters work in
2004. Aside from a busy professional life in IT, Andrew
also has a telescope he operates at the
the Grove
Creek Observatory in Australia. He is presently part
of a world-wide campaign to monitor OJ
287.
- Esko Gardner worked with Johan Holmberg for
a Masters Thesis --- on high resolution spectra of
bulge stars obtained at the European Southern
Observatory's Very Large Telescope. Esko finished his
Masters in May 2006.
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