Exploring the Universe from UBC

Some History	Reading Room	Astronomical Facilities
Astronomy Faculty	Research Programmes	Computing Facilities

Some History

Astronomy was perhaps first formally recognized at UBC in 1972; when the "Department of Geophysics" changed its name to "Geophysics and Astronomy", reflecting the increasing activity in astronomical research and teaching. In the mid 1960's Micheal Ovenden had been invited into the Dept with the hope that he would gather together a number of researchers who would eventually form their own Dept of Astronomy. While this ultimate goal was not achieved, a strong astronomical research group had been established, courses and degrees in astronomy were being offered; so the name change to Geophysics & Astronomy was appropriate.

Independently, but more or less, coincidently, the long established Physics department also became involved with astronomical research with the hiring of some radio astronomers including Bill McCutcheon and Phil Gregory.

In 1996, the Dept. of Geophysics & Astronomy was dissolved: the astronomy group merged with Physics to form a new Dept of Physics & Astronomy; the geophysics group merged with Oceanography and Geological Sciences to form Earth & Ocean Sciences. The merger became much more of a reality in 2001 when the group left their longtime accommadations in the old "Geophysics and Astronomy Building" (since renamed EOS-East) and moved into the Hennings Building.

Astronomy Faculty

J.R. Auman (Emeritus) Brett Gladman Phil Gregory (Emeritus) Mark Halpern Jeremy Heyl P. Hickson J.M. Matthews

T.K. Menon (Emeritus) Bill McCutcheon H.B. Richer D. Scott Ingrid Stairs Ludo van Waerbaeke Jasper V Wall (Adjunct) G.A.H. Walker (Emeritus)

Research Programmes

The diverse research topics in astronomy and astrophysics in the Department include:

• design and construction of large liquid mirror telescopes;
• Solar System: including Dynamics, Formation, and Evolution; Observations of small bodies (Kuiper Belt comets, moons, asteroids); Meteoritics and Celestial Mechanics
• high-resolution spectroscopy of solar-type stars and K-giants to search for sub-stellar companions (including planets) and pulsation;
• Doppler imaging of stars and asteroseismic studies of nonradial stellar pulsations;
• spectral studies of the circumstellar envelopes of hot stars.
• the low-mass tail of the stellar luminosity function and atmospheric modelling of low-mass cool stars;
• the dynamical and chemical evolution of globular clusters;
• composition and distribution of visible and dark matter in galaxies
• timing radio pulsars, and using the data to learn about neutron-star astrophysics, binary evolution and general relativity
• Extragalactic Distance Scale
• galaxy interactions and the evolution of compact clusters of galaxies, studied at optical and radio wavelengths;
• the structure of the Universe as revealed by fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background and by Cosmic Velocity Fields

Astronomical Facilities

Local facilities include a 42-cm Cassegrain/coudé telescope on the roof of the Geophysics & Astronomy Building which is used for student training, instrument development, public education, and research into the pulsations of bright stars. The computer-controlled telescope is equipped with a coudé spectrograph and a 2048 x 2048 CCD which can be applied to both imaging and spectroscopy.

The latest addition to our observing arsenal is a 6-m Large Zenith Telescope located just outside Vancouver. Designed for multi-bandpass photometric surveys of faint galaxies and quasars, the LZT will be the largest optical telescope operating in Canada.

To study stars and galaxies at a variety of wavelengths, UBC astronomers take full advantage of major observatories across the globe and in Earth orbit. Nearby, the optical telescopes of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (Victoria) and the radio facilities at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (Penticton) are regularly used both by faculty and students. The 3.6-metre telescope of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and the sub-millimetre James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea, have become key research tools for the Department. In addition, significant amounts of telescope time have also been obtained at the Las Campanas Observatory, European Southern Observatory and Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory, all of which are located in the Andes Mountains of Chile. Departmental members have also been frequent users of the radio facilities at the Very Large Array in New Mexico. Several faculty are part of teams obtaining and analysing data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Reading Room Facilities

We also have close ties with the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC) in Victoria, which gives computer access to space- and ground-based observatory data archives, on-line catalogues and bibliographic search packages like SIMBAD

Computing Facilities

The astronomy group is committed to providing computing facilities in line with the needs of modern astronomical research. To that end, it operates a network offering Unix based workstations (Unix, Xterminals) and a Windows PC Lab. Compute intensive servers (Solaris or Linux), tape access (DLT, 8mm, DAT) are also available. For LARGE number crunching or massively parallel jobs, researchers can use the vn cluster operated by Matthew Choptuik The software environment includes MATLAB, IRAF/STSDAS, AIPS, and StarLink software. Additional resources and Internet connectivity are provided by the University's ITServices