ADDITIONAL PROJECTS NOT IN BOOKLET:

Title: Infrared multi-object spectrograph for VLTs (NEW)

Instrumentation

Supervisor: Phil Rees

During the autumn of 2008 UKATC will begin assembly and test of a K-band Multi-object spectrograph for the ESO Very Large Telescope in Chile. The instrument will contain 24 cryogenic robotic arms to pick off small portions of the telescope field and produce an integral field spectrograph of each of those pick-off fields.

The project will involve integration of major sub-assemblies into the cryostat and performance testing in the laboratory. Some input to the definition of the test equipment and analysis of the data will be required."

Title: Analysis of JWST/MIRI test data (NEW)

Instrumentation

Supervisor: Dr Alistair Glasse

MIRI is a mid-infrared imager and spectrometer being built by a consortium of European institutions led by the UKATC and which is due to fly on the JWST, the replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, in 2013. MIRI is currently under test, with the ATC tasked to analyse the image quality delivered by the spectrometer and imager. The project would involve the development of IDL routines for the analysis of MIRI images, and the interpretation of the measurements to predict and simulate MIRI's expected on-orbit performance.

PROJECTS IN BOOKLET (THERE ARE MORE IN THE BOOKLET):

Title: Galaxy formation in the multiverse

Cosmology

Supervisor: Prof. John Peacock

A fundamental difficulty in cosmology is understanding how the vacuum density can take a non-zero figure that is so low compared to a natural particle-physics scale. An increasingly popular explanation is the "anthropic" or "multiverse" solution, in which the existence of an ensemble of universes is postulated: those with extreme values of the vacuum density do not form galaxies easily, and so are less likely to be experienced by observers. To implement this calculation, it is necessary to predict the amount of star formation that occurs over all time in a given member of the multiverse, and so far this has been done in an extremely crude way, based simply on the fraction of mass in the universe that collapses into a system of mass similar to the local group. Varying the vacuum energy will change the physical timescales of structure formation, and so alter the efficiency of galaxy formation. The intention of this project is to implement a simplified model of galaxy formation in order to study these effects, and to compare the results with an analysis of more sophisticated models.

The project would give an introduction to some of the forefront issues in the fundamental nature of the universe, as well as an overview of the physical mechanisms involved in galaxy formation. Strong computational skills will be required, ideally involving some exposure to fortran (but on-job training will be available). For some background reading, see:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.0898

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0511338

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0605045

Title: Is a ground or a space-based telescope best for measuring cosmological lensing?

Cosmology

Supervisors: Dr Catherine Heymans, Prof. Alan Heavens

Many cosmologists have concluded that gravitational lensing holds the most promise to understand the mysterious dark matter and dark energy that dominate the Universe. It is widely believed that studying the properties of the 'dark side of the Universe' could provide the next major breakthrough in fundamental physics. As a result, funding agencies worldwide are investing heavily in the next generation of telescopes, designed to accurately detect and analyse the cosmological weak lensing signal that is imprinted on the images of distant galaxies.

One of the key current questions is which type of telescope is best for measuring weak lensing. Observations from space are not hampered by the Earths atmosphere that smears out the images, erasing some of the very weak lensing signal that we are trying to detect. However from the ground it is easier to obtain higher signal-to-noise data which has been shown to lead to a more accurate analysis.

In this project we will address this issue by analysing and comparing data of the same region of sky taken by the ground-based COMBO-17 survey and the Hubble Space Telescope GEMS and STAGES surveys.

The stages of the project are 1) Learn about weak lensing measurements. 2) Run an exising user-friendly 'KSB' pipeline on the ground-based data to create a weak lensing catalogue. 3) Create a map of the dark matter from the ground-based weak lensing data. 4) Compare the ground-based results with the existing space-based results created with the same KSB measurement pipeline.

With extra time, there is also a wealth of additional simulated space and ground-based data available to investigate this question further.

For more information see:

Dark Matter Maps: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~ppzmeg/stages/public.html COMBO-17: http://www.mpia-hd.mpg.de/COMBO/combo_index.html GEMS: http://www.mpia.de/GEMS/gems.htm STAGES: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~ppzmeg/stages/

Producing a reference work for low temperature physics

Astronomical Instrumentation

Supervisor: Dr. Adam Woodcraft

An increasing number of instruments for astronomy require a low (<= 4.2 K) or even ultra-low (<= 1 K) temperature environment in order to operate usefully. The field of low temperature physics desperately needs a good reference for the thermal conductivity of different materials. Existing compilations are very limited and mostly decades out of date. A good reference is likely to become a standard work for years to come for physicists and engineers working at low temperatures around the world.

The project will involve:

• Learning about the physics involved in conduction at low temperatures, and methods used to make measurements. • Using physical principles to critically examine existing measurements in order to determine reliable values, and to estimate thermal conductivity values where measurements do not exist (for example by extrapolating from measurements at higher temperatures) • Carrying out literature searches to find some further sources of information (however, we have already collected most of the information you will need) • Assembling the information into an easy to use form • Possibly putting the information onto a web site

Title: Existence of Extended Dark Matter Halos around Bright Isolated Galaxies in GAMA

Cosmology

Supervisor: Dr. Peder Norberg

The view that galaxies are surrounded by large dark matter halos dates back more than 30 years to the pioneering study of the rotation curve of M31 by Rubin & Ford (1970). Extended galactic halos are, in fact, a generic feature of the cold dark matter model of galaxy formation (Blumenthal et al. 1984), but this fundamental theoretical prediction has limited direct observational support, especially for galactic halos. Only since the advent of large galaxy survey is it possible to address this prediction in a statistical way.

Using SDSS DR6, the largest galaxy redshift survey to date with over 600'000 galaxy redshifts over ~1/5 of the sky, and GAMA, a currently on-going galaxy redshift survey probing even fainter galaxies than SDSS, we propose to identify a large sample of isolated bright galaxies, together with their much fainter satellites. We will test, by applying the same isolation criteria to realistic mock galaxy catalogues constructed for the GAMA survey from the Millennium simulation, the hypothesis of stacking satellites of isolated galaxies of similar luminosity for measuring the underlying velocity dispersion. By using a likelihood estimator, which accounts for interlopers in the satellite samples, our aim is to estimate, as function of projected radius and primary galaxy type, the associated satellite velocity dispersion. Depending on the quality of the mock catalogues (ie. in their capacity of reproducing the data, so that a proper interpretation can be made), an attempt to estimate the dynamical mass of the observed halos will be made.

This year the focus of the project is to work more extensively with the real data (SDSS & GAMA) and incorporate the findings from the 2007 MPhys project on using variable isolation criterias. With this project, the student will familiarize him/her-self with the mock galaxy catalogues constructed from large N-body simulations, get use to handle large galaxy catalogues (both real and mock) and learn about biases and limitations of real and mock galaxy surveys.

This project falls in the category: statistical; theoretical; computational. Note that programming skills in Fortran or C is very useful.

Further information:

GAMA: http://www.eso.org/~jliske/gama/

SDSS: http://www.sdss.org/dr6/index.html

Mocks: http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/millennium/

Title: Comparative study of photometric redshift estimators

Cosmology

Supervisor: Dr. Peder Norberg

In recent years, special effort has been devoted to the development of robust and reliable photometric redshift estimators, hereafter referred as photo-z estimators. The main science aims behind this effort are either to obtain in a "cheap" way statistical redshifts for large multi-band imaging surveys or to derive physical galaxy properties (like stellar masses, etc.) for multi-wavelengths samples that would be too costly to get spectra for. For that reason, two families of photometric redshift estimators have been developed: artificial neural network (e.g. ANNz) and template spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting (e.g. Hyperz) based ones. The former require a training set to be set up, while the latter requires a realistic set of SED templates to work properly.

For this project, those type of publicly available codes will be tested using SDSS data, for which quality redshift information is available down to r~17.7 together with rather accurate photometry. We will investigate the statistical properties of the photo-z distributions, with particular attention to the individually inferred photo-z distributions, their sensitivity to catastrophic photometric redshift failures and the robustness of the results for different galaxy samples.

The real test for the photometric redshift codes will come when the analysis is extended to fainter objects in SDSS, for which the GAMA galaxy redshift survey is currently collecting a "complete" redshift sample. The aim here is to see how much results calibrated on a brighter sub-sample can be extended to fainter galaxy samples. The work done during the course of the project is fundamental for upcoming detailed clustering studies that will be performed with large imaging surveys like Pan-STARRS, for which only limited spectroscopic information will be available.

This project falls in the category: statistical; theoretical; computational. Note that programming skills in Fortran or C is very useful.

Further information:

ANNz: http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~lahav/annz.html

Hyperz: http://webast.ast.obs-mip.fr/hyperz/

Title: Environmental study using GAMA and SDSS

Cosmology

Supervisor: Dr. Peder Norberg

GAMA, the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey, is a novel galaxy redshift survey that is unique by its size and depth. Only GAMA is able to provide over a statistically representative volume spectra of galaxies as faint as the Small Magellanic Cloud (and even fainter). This 150 square degree redshift survey of the 'local' Universe has been designed to answer many essential questions relative to galaxy formation.

One of them is the influence of the large scale environment on the galaxy population. Preliminary studies with SDSS and 2dFGRS, the largest redshift surveys of the 'local' Universe to date, have allowed us to measure in great detail the environmental dependence of the galaxy luminosity function. However, those studies were limited by the depth of the surveys. As GAMA reaches typically ten times deeper than SDSS, it is natural to attempt to re-address those findings. Because GAMA is not as large as neither SDSS or 2dFGRS, it will become important to use both GAMA and SDSS jointly in this analysis.

This project has two basic goals: first design a simple method that can measure quantitatively in a robust fashion the large scale environment of a galaxy, applicable to both real data (GAMA & SDSS) and mock/simulated data; then the aim is to study the galaxy luminosity function as function of colour and environment, and critically compare models with real data.

With this project, the student will familiarize him/her-self with the mock galaxy catalogues constructed from large N-body simulations, get use to handle large galaxy catalogues (both real and mock) and learn about biases and limitations of real and mock galaxy surveys.

This project falls in the category: statistical; theoretical; computational. Note that programming skills in Fortran or C is very useful.

Further information:

GAMA: http://www.eso.org/~jliske/gama/

SDSS: http://www.sdss.org/dr6/index.html

Mocks: http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/millennium/

Automated classification of near infrared variables in large synoptic surveys.

Survey Astronomy

Supervisor: Dr. Nicholas Cross

Astronomy has entered a new era of wide field time variability surveys, with ambitious all sky surveys such as Pan-STARRS about to start and LSST being planned. Given the amount of data generated by these surveys, it is essential that data archives can provide robust variability classifications that allow astronomers to pick out useful subsamples efficiently.

The Wide-Field Astronomy Unit at the Institute for Astronomy is currently archiving data from UKIRT WFCAM, the current fastest near infrared survey instrument and will start archiving data from the VISTA telescope in early 2009. These will be the largest near infrared surveys for some time. The VISTA Variable survey starting in 2009 will be the first large near infra red survey of variable stars and will eventually observe of ~1 billion stars as it covers the galactic plane and bulge. The main science goal is to find and identify RR-Lyrae stars to estimate accurate distances to structures in the bulge. This survey will start too late to be used for the current project, but there are several smaller synoptic datasets taken by WFCAM already, which can be used to develop a suitable tool.

The task of the student will be to use the available data: colours, statistical measurements of variability, star-galaxy separation etc to find and classify variable objects and demonstrate that these classifications are useful astronomically and robust enough to work on different surveys. The work of this project may be incorporated into future versions of the Vista Data Flow System archive.

This project will involve the use of large relational databases, many statistical methods and some simulation.

Further Information: WFCAM Science Archive: http://surveys.roe.ac.uk/wsa/index.html

VISTA Surveys: http://www.eso.org/sci/observing/policies/PublicSurveys/sciencePublicSurveys.html#VISTA

ADDITIONAL PROJECTS NOT IN BOOKLET:

Title: Infrared multi-object spectrograph for VLTs (NEW)

Instrumentation

Supervisor: Phil Rees

During the autumn of 2008 UKATC will begin assembly and test of a K-band Multi-object spectrograph for the ESO Very Large Telescope in Chile. The instrument will contain 24 cryogenic robotic arms to pick off small portions of the telescope field and produce an integral field spectrograph of each of those pick-off fields.

The project will involve integration of major sub-assemblies into the cryostat and performance testing in the laboratory. Some input to the definition of the test equipment and analysis of the data will be required."

Title: Analysis of JWST/MIRI test data (NEW)

Instrumentation

Supervisor: Dr Alistair Glasse

MIRI is a mid-infrared imager and spectrometer being built by a consortium of European institutions led by the UKATC and which is due to fly on the JWST, the replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, in 2013. MIRI is currently under test, with the ATC tasked to analyse the image quality delivered by the spectrometer and imager. The project would involve the development of IDL routines for the analysis of MIRI images, and the interpretation of the measurements to predict and simulate MIRI's expected on-orbit performance.

PROJECTS IN BOOKLET (THERE ARE MORE IN THE BOOKLET):

Title: Galaxy formation in the multiverse

Cosmology

Supervisor: Prof. John Peacock

A fundamental difficulty in cosmology is understanding how the vacuum density can take a non-zero figure that is so low compared to a natural particle-physics scale. An increasingly popular explanation is the "anthropic" or "multiverse" solution, in which the existence of an ensemble of universes is postulated: those with extreme values of the vacuum density do not form galaxies easily, and so are less likely to be experienced by observers. To implement this calculation, it is necessary to predict the amount of star formation that occurs over all time in a given member of the multiverse, and so far this has been done in an extremely crude way, based simply on the fraction of mass in the universe that collapses into a system of mass similar to the local group. Varying the vacuum energy will change the physical timescales of structure formation, and so alter the efficiency of galaxy formation. The intention of this project is to implement a simplified model of galaxy formation in order to study these effects, and to compare the results with an analysis of more sophisticated models.

The project would give an introduction to some of the forefront issues in the fundamental nature of the universe, as well as an overview of the physical mechanisms involved in galaxy formation. Strong computational skills will be required, ideally involving some exposure to fortran (but on-job training will be available). For some background reading, see:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.0898

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0511338

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0605045

Title: Is a ground or a space-based telescope best for measuring cosmological lensing?

Cosmology

Supervisors: Dr Catherine Heymans, Prof. Alan Heavens

Many cosmologists have concluded that gravitational lensing holds the most promise to understand the mysterious dark matter and dark energy that dominate the Universe. It is widely believed that studying the properties of the 'dark side of the Universe' could provide the next major breakthrough in fundamental physics. As a result, funding agencies worldwide are investing heavily in the next generation of telescopes, designed to accurately detect and analyse the cosmological weak lensing signal that is imprinted on the images of distant galaxies.

One of the key current questions is which type of telescope is best for measuring weak lensing. Observations from space are not hampered by the Earths atmosphere that smears out the images, erasing some of the very weak lensing signal that we are trying to detect. However from the ground it is easier to obtain higher signal-to-noise data which has been shown to lead to a more accurate analysis.

In this project we will address this issue by analysing and comparing data of the same region of sky taken by the ground-based COMBO-17 survey and the Hubble Space Telescope GEMS and STAGES surveys.

The stages of the project are 1) Learn about weak lensing measurements. 2) Run an exising user-friendly 'KSB' pipeline on the ground-based data to create a weak lensing catalogue. 3) Create a map of the dark matter from the ground-based weak lensing data. 4) Compare the ground-based results with the existing space-based results created with the same KSB measurement pipeline.

With extra time, there is also a wealth of additional simulated space and ground-based data available to investigate this question further.

For more information see:

Dark Matter Maps: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~ppzmeg/stages/public.html COMBO-17: http://www.mpia-hd.mpg.de/COMBO/combo_index.html GEMS: http://www.mpia.de/GEMS/gems.htm STAGES: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~ppzmeg/stages/

Producing a reference work for low temperature physics

Astronomical Instrumentation

Supervisor: Dr. Adam Woodcraft

An increasing number of instruments for astronomy require a low (<= 4.2 K) or even ultra-low (<= 1 K) temperature environment in order to operate usefully. The field of low temperature physics desperately needs a good reference for the thermal conductivity of different materials. Existing compilations are very limited and mostly decades out of date. A good reference is likely to become a standard work for years to come for physicists and engineers working at low temperatures around the world.

The project will involve:

• Learning about the physics involved in conduction at low temperatures, and methods used to make measurements. • Using physical principles to critically examine existing measurements in order to determine reliable values, and to estimate thermal conductivity values where measurements do not exist (for example by extrapolating from measurements at higher temperatures) • Carrying out literature searches to find some further sources of information (however, we have already collected most of the information you will need) • Assembling the information into an easy to use form • Possibly putting the information onto a web site

Title: Existence of Extended Dark Matter Halos around Bright Isolated Galaxies in GAMA

Cosmology

Supervisor: Dr. Peder Norberg

The view that galaxies are surrounded by large dark matter halos dates back more than 30 years to the pioneering study of the rotation curve of M31 by Rubin & Ford (1970). Extended galactic halos are, in fact, a generic feature of the cold dark matter model of galaxy formation (Blumenthal et al. 1984), but this fundamental theoretical prediction has limited direct observational support, especially for galactic halos. Only since the advent of large galaxy survey is it possible to address this prediction in a statistical way.

Using SDSS DR6, the largest galaxy redshift survey to date with over 600'000 galaxy redshifts over ~1/5 of the sky, and GAMA, a currently on-going galaxy redshift survey probing even fainter galaxies than SDSS, we propose to identify a large sample of isolated bright galaxies, together with their much fainter satellites. We will test, by applying the same isolation criteria to realistic mock galaxy catalogues constructed for the GAMA survey from the Millennium simulation, the hypothesis of stacking satellites of isolated galaxies of similar luminosity for measuring the underlying velocity dispersion. By using a likelihood estimator, which accounts for interlopers in the satellite samples, our aim is to estimate, as function of projected radius and primary galaxy type, the associated satellite velocity dispersion. Depending on the quality of the mock catalogues (ie. in their capacity of reproducing the data, so that a proper interpretation can be made), an attempt to estimate the dynamical mass of the observed halos will be made.

This year the focus of the project is to work more extensively with the real data (SDSS & GAMA) and incorporate the findings from the 2007 MPhys project on using variable isolation criterias. With this project, the student will familiarize him/her-self with the mock galaxy catalogues constructed from large N-body simulations, get use to handle large galaxy catalogues (both real and mock) and learn about biases and limitations of real and mock galaxy surveys.

This project falls in the category: statistical; theoretical; computational. Note that programming skills in Fortran or C is very useful.

Further information:

GAMA: http://www.eso.org/~jliske/gama/

SDSS: http://www.sdss.org/dr6/index.html

Mocks: http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/millennium/

Title: Comparative study of photometric redshift estimators

Cosmology

Supervisor: Dr. Peder Norberg

In recent years, special effort has been devoted to the development of robust and reliable photometric redshift estimators, hereafter referred as photo-z estimators. The main science aims behind this effort are either to obtain in a "cheap" way statistical redshifts for large multi-band imaging surveys or to derive physical galaxy properties (like stellar masses, etc.) for multi-wavelengths samples that would be too costly to get spectra for. For that reason, two families of photometric redshift estimators have been developed: artificial neural network (e.g. ANNz) and template spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting (e.g. Hyperz) based ones. The former require a training set to be set up, while the latter requires a realistic set of SED templates to work properly.

For this project, those type of publicly available codes will be tested using SDSS data, for which quality redshift information is available down to r~17.7 together with rather accurate photometry. We will investigate the statistical properties of the photo-z distributions, with particular attention to the individually inferred photo-z distributions, their sensitivity to catastrophic photometric redshift failures and the robustness of the results for different galaxy samples.

The real test for the photometric redshift codes will come when the analysis is extended to fainter objects in SDSS, for which the GAMA galaxy redshift survey is currently collecting a "complete" redshift sample. The aim here is to see how much results calibrated on a brighter sub-sample can be extended to fainter galaxy samples. The work done during the course of the project is fundamental for upcoming detailed clustering studies that will be performed with large imaging surveys like Pan-STARRS, for which only limited spectroscopic information will be available.

This project falls in the category: statistical; theoretical; computational. Note that programming skills in Fortran or C is very useful.

Further information:

ANNz: http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~lahav/annz.html

Hyperz: http://webast.ast.obs-mip.fr/hyperz/

Title: Environmental study using GAMA and SDSS

Cosmology

Supervisor: Dr. Peder Norberg

GAMA, the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey, is a novel galaxy redshift survey that is unique by its size and depth. Only GAMA is able to provide over a statistically representative volume spectra of galaxies as faint as the Small Magellanic Cloud (and even fainter). This 150 square degree redshift survey of the 'local' Universe has been designed to answer many essential questions relative to galaxy formation.

One of them is the influence of the large scale environment on the galaxy population. Preliminary studies with SDSS and 2dFGRS, the largest redshift surveys of the 'local' Universe to date, have allowed us to measure in great detail the environmental dependence of the galaxy luminosity function. However, those studies were limited by the depth of the surveys. As GAMA reaches typically ten times deeper than SDSS, it is natural to attempt to re-address those findings. Because GAMA is not as large as neither SDSS or 2dFGRS, it will become important to use both GAMA and SDSS jointly in this analysis.

This project has two basic goals: first design a simple method that can measure quantitatively in a robust fashion the large scale environment of a galaxy, applicable to both real data (GAMA & SDSS) and mock/simulated data; then the aim is to study the galaxy luminosity function as function of colour and environment, and critically compare models with real data.

With this project, the student will familiarize him/her-self with the mock galaxy catalogues constructed from large N-body simulations, get use to handle large galaxy catalogues (both real and mock) and learn about biases and limitations of real and mock galaxy surveys.

This project falls in the category: statistical; theoretical; computational. Note that programming skills in Fortran or C is very useful.

Further information:

GAMA: http://www.eso.org/~jliske/gama/

SDSS: http://www.sdss.org/dr6/index.html

Mocks: http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/millennium/

Structural Decomposition of Galaxies in the near-infrared.

Extragalactic Astronomy

Supervisor: Dr. Nicholas Cross

Galaxies are composed of many different structural components, including bulges, disks, bars and spiral arms. These components have very different dynamical states and star formation histories. Studies which do not split the galaxies into these components find it difficult to disentangle the different populations and measure reliable masses and ages. Moreover the additional information from the different components put useful limits on models of galaxy formation.

The near infrared suffers less from the problems of dust absorption that plague optical surveys. The infrared light follows the underlying older stellar populations unlike optical light that is dominated by massive star forming regions.

This project will measure the structural properties of a small sample of infrared galaxies to show how the properties change with galaxy mass. The properties can also be compared to their equivalent optical counterparts to understand the changes in the stellar population between components.

The current largest infrared survey, theUKIRT Deep Infrared Sky Survey (UKIDSS) and the larger VISTA survey, which will commence this summer, will both be available for the student to use. The imaging and catalogue data are archived at the IfA as part of the VISTA Data Flow System.

There is also a large amount of spectroscopic and multi-wavelength data available for many of these galaxies through the GAMA project and related optical, UV and far infrared projects.

Further information:

UKIDSS: http://www.ukidss.org/

VISTA: http://www.vista.ac.uk/

GAMA: http://www.eso.org/~jliske/gama/

WFCAM Science Archive (UKIDSS data): http://surveys.roe.ac.uk/wsa/

Title: The black-hole masses and geometry of the central engines of luminous quasars

Extra-galactic Astronomy

Supervisors: Dr. Ross Mclure, Dr. Michele Cirasuolo

Luminous quasars are amongst the most energetic objects in the Universe, and are powered by a supermassive black hole actively accreting gas from its host galaxy. The optical spectra of luminous quasars feature many broad emission lines which contain information on the mass of the central black hole and, potentially, the geometry of the central emitting region. The initial aim of this project will be to analyze and model the optical emission lines of thousands of luminous quasars drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) database. This information will be used to calculate the masses of the central black holes and to investigate how the quasar properties vary with this key physical parameter. Furthermore, by combining the emission line information with imaging and radio data, the aim will be to constrain the geometry of the central emission region, and to thereby test the orientation-based unification scheme for quasars.

MPhys projects at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh

• A Search for Dark Halos in the Millennium Simulation - Supervisor: Dr Eric Tittley

• Implement Polar Griding in the Hydrodynamical Radiative Transfer Code, EnzoRT - Supervisor: Dr Eric Tittley

• FPGA Hardware Adapted for a Radiative Transfer Code - Supervisor: Dr Eric Tittley

• Radiative Transfer in SPH - Supervisor: Dr Eric Tittley