What is astrophysics research?
Drexel is a recognized leader in astrophysics research, with both students and faculty contributing to the field. Learn more about our faculty’s current research in astrophysics below.
Let's build a new introduction.
- Begin with a brief, inspiring definition of the research area. For example: What is astrophysics research?
- Consider that our reader may be 16 years old.
- Broadly, what does this research group explore?
- Why? What is the group motivated by?
- What are the goals of the group?
- What do you hope to advance, promote, understand?
- How does it make an impact?
- Why does it matter?
Some phrasing to consider:
Our research covers wide areas of . . . Our group emphasizes . . . Our primary research investigates, explores, examines . . . Our long-term goals are . . . The discoveries we make contribute to
. . . Our discoveries inspire the next generation of students. . .
Research Topics
- Active Galactic Nuclei/Quasars
- Compact Binary Stars
- Cosmology
- Designing the "Petaflops" Computer
- Large-Scale Structure
- Numerical Hydrodynamics
- Parallel Computing
- Rotational Instabilities
- Star Clusters and Stellar Dynamics
Projects
Facilities
- The Joseph R. Lynch Observatory at Drexel – Houses a 16-inch Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope equipped with SBIG CCD camera.
- The Numerical Astrophysics Facility – Emphasizes theoretical and numerical studies of stars, star clusters, the early universe, galaxy distributions, cosmology modeling, and gravitational lensing. The facility employs special purpose high-performance computers, such as the Gravity Pipeline Engine (GRAPE), a new Beowulf cluster (128 processors, 128G RAM, 2 TB RAID disk), and a system using Graphics Processing Units to achieve computational speeds of up to a trillion floating point operations per second.
- The Sloan Digital Sky Survey – Drexel faculty and students actively analyze data from this facility which operates a 2.5-m telescope at Apache Point, New Mexico, and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope to be built in Chile (2020).
Faculty
| Faculty Member |
Contact |
Research Interests |
Research Discovery |
|
|
Professor; Department Head, Physics
Disque Hall 815
goldberg@drexel.edu
|
- Theoretical and computational cosmology
- Extragalactic astrophysics
- Gravitational lensing
- Popular science writing
|
Publications |
|
|
Professor; Chair, Faculty Senate Budget, Process, and Development (BP&D) Committee
Disque 812
gordon.t.richards@drexel.edu
|
- Quasars
- Active Galactic Nuclei
- Supermassive black holes
- Galaxy evolution
- Sky surveys
- Infrared/X-ray/radio astronomy
|
Publications |
|
|
Assistant Professor
Disque 805
ns3527@drexel.edu
|
- Machine learning
- Astronomical surveys
- Dynamic resource allocation
- Transients
- Multimessenger astronomy
|
Publications |
|
|
Professor
Disque Hall 811
vogeley@drexel.edu
|
- Development of a cosmic void detector that employs deep learning to find voids in large galaxy surveys. The purpose of this detector is to help constrain models for the mysterious dark energy that causes the universe to accelerate in its expansion.
- Study of the environmental dependence of galaxy properties and active galactic nuclei as a test for models of formation of structure in the universe.
- Analysis of the variability of active galactic nuclei as a test for models of the physics of accretion onto supermassive black holes.
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Publications |