Simon Vaughan
welcome to my web area
I am a lecturer in Observational Astronomy in the Physics and Astronomy Department of the University of Leicester.
My research uses observations of cosmic X-ray sources to study physics under extreme conditions, in particular, close to black holes. Material approaching a black hole can be subjected to forces and temperatures so extreme they cannot be reproduced in the laboratory. Such extremes provide one of the toughest tests for our understanding of the basic physics of gravity and radiation - in effect, using black holes as physics laboratories.
This work uses observations made with ESA's Cornerstone X-ray mission XMM-Newton, NASA's Great Observatory Chandra, NASA's RXTE and the joint US-UK-Italy mission Swift. I use the data from these missions to study the behaviour of active galactic nuclei (AGN; accreting supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies), gamma-ray bursts (GRBs; the brightest explosions in the known Universe) and black hole X-ray binaries in our Galaxy.
Maintained by Simon Vaughan
(sav2 at star. le. ac. uk)
webmail /
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