Ben Maughan's Home page
Find me in room 4.19, Physics (full contact information is here). Look at my calendar to see when I'm busy.![[Sunset on Mauna Kea]](sunset.jpg)
| Welcome to my homepage! I'm a lecturer in
the Astrophysics
Group here at
the University of
Bristol. My work involves using the Chandra and XMM-Newton
satellites to study the X-rays emitted by high redshift (very
distant) galaxy clusters. A cluster of galaxies contains
hundreds or thousands of galaxies (many very much like our
own) and an even larger mass of hot, ionised gas which emits strongly in the X-rays, but a cluster is dominated by invisible 'dark matter', the nature of which is unknown, but the subject of intense study!
Galaxy clusters are the most massive gravitationally bound objects in the universe, and as such their properties are predicted by cosmological models (models describing the way the universe began and evolved). We can investigate these properties by observing the galaxies and the hot gas in clusters, and when compared with cosmological predictions, this gives us a very useful method with which to test cosmological models - a method which is particularly powerful when applied to high redshift clusters. The picture above shows the sunset over the telescopes of Mauna Kea (Hawaii) during an observing trip in April 2001. To find out more about me and my work, follow these links... |
As Superman correctly notes using his X-ray vision, galaxy clusters are extremely massive! |