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Victor P. Debattista Galaxy Dynamics Group
Professor of Astrophysics
Jeremiah Horrocks Institute
University of Central Lancashire
Preston, UK PR1 2HE
Telephone: +44 (0)177 289 3568
Fax: +44 (0)177 289 2996
Email: 
Recent Results in the News
A Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC
1175, released by ESA which refers to recent our study of cosmic
evolution of box/peanut-shaped bulges.
Another Hubble Picture of the Week
NGC 3887, from the Composite Bulges Survey.
And yet another Hubble Picture of the Week, now
of
NGC 5364, taken as part of the Composite Bulges Survey.
Another Hubble Picture of the Week, this time of
IC 2051, taken as part of the Composite Bulges Survey. We are
active members of this survey, with our simulations providing
important input to understanding these beautiful objects.
A Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 4380, taken as part of the Composite Bulges Survey, has been featured as the Hubble Picture of the Week.
In collaboration with Peter Erwin (Max Planck Institute for
Extraterrestrial Physics) we recently discovered the first examples of
barred galaxies in the process of buckling.
This work was described in AAS Nova.
GalaxyFlyer : We are collaborating with
Laurent Noel, of UCLan's Software Engineering group, to create an
efficient, visualisation software for large simulations. This is an
example of a simulation covering a large cosmological volume simulated
with gas and star formation from Samuel Earp's research (239 Mb). We
have showcased this software at
here
AstroFest.
Research Group Members
We closely collaborate with the research group of Dr. Joseph
Caruana at the University of Malta. Dr. Caruana's research webpage
can be found here
Former Group Members
PhD positions PhD positions are available to work in my
group to study the formation and evolution of the disk of the Milky
Way. The project will seek to make sense of the data from the Gaia
satellite, which was launched in 2013. The first data release (DR1)
came in September 2016 and DR2 arrived on April 25, 2018. The
successful applicant will learn how to run and analyse large
simulations with gas and star formation to compare with observations.
If interested, please contact me directly via email.
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The theme of my research is the formation and evolution of galaxies, which I study through simulations, observations and modeling.
Understanding the formation of galaxies — the fundamental building blocks of the universe — with their array of morphologies and scaling relations, is one of the most important problems in cosmology today. Among the questions that need to be addressed are:
- How did the Milky Way form? How was its bulge formed? Where are stars now in relation to where they were born? How is the disk orientated relative to the halo?
- How do stars form in galaxies? How can we use the ages of stars to disentangle the formation of galaxies? How much is this archaeological record disturbed by internal evolution and cannibalism?
- How do galaxies get their shapes? What sorts of structures arise from internal evolution? What sorts of structures result from external evolution? How can the two be distinguished?
- How do supermassive black holes and nuclear clusters form and evolve? How do they co-evolve with their host galaxies?
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