RSAA Graduate Program in Astronomy & Astrophysics

Since the 1950s, the work of the Observatories has included an outstandingly successful Graduate Program. RSAA currently has about 30 PhD students - a third of them are international students. Stromlo graduates are to be found in many of the world's major astronomical centres.

The three-and-a-half year PhD Program offers students access to state-of-the-art optical, infra-red, radio and computational facilities and draws on the expertise of some 25 RSAA astronomers, as well as researchers at CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility, the Anglo-Australian Observatory, and elsewhere.

The main research interests at RSAA encompass observational and theoretical aspects of extra-solar planets, stellar atmospheres and evolution, the interstellar medium, globular clusters, galactic structure, the Magellanic Clouds, normal galaxies, active galaxies, radio sources, quasars, and cosmology. Theoretical work is currently being done in the fields of plasma and high energy astrophysics, stellar atmospheres, stellar and galactic evolution, galactic dynamics and n-body simulation. RSAA also offers a PhD in Astronomical Instrumentation associated with instrumentation for optical, IR and radio telescopes. Current projects involve IR adapative optics imaging and spectroscopy for extremely large telescopes and low frequency receivers for the Murchison Array.

RSAA operates the ANU 2.3m Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory which is equipped with instrumentation for low- and high-resolution spectroscopy, and faint object imaging from near ultraviolet to infra-red wavelengths. Plans are well advanced to replace telescopes lost in the January 2003 fires at Mount Stromlo with more advanced technology. SkyMapper, a 1.3m telescope being constructed at Siding Spring, will see first light at the end of 2008.  The Program also has access to the 3.9-m Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT), the Parkes Radio Telescope and the Australia Telescope Compact Array operated by CSIRO. Powerful computing facilities are available for data acquisition, reductions, and theoretical model building.