Specialisation: Astrophysics

In the astrophysics specialisation the students will be introduced to ideas at the cutting-edge of research in astrophysics and cosmology. Lectures will be presented by academics from the Institute for Computational Cosmology and the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy.

In Term 1 students will take a total of 64 lecture hours introducing them to stars, gas, and supermassive black holes in galaxies, the Milky Way and external galaxies, and cosmology. Term 2 will cover gravitational lensing, the formation and evolution of galaxies and large-scale structure, with focus on cosmological simulations for a total of 106 lecture hours. A more detailed list of topics can be found here.

All modules are assessed directly after the corresponding lectures, i.e. you attend a four-week block of lectures and then you directly start with the assessment. The format of these differs depending on the module (see the FAQ for more details), the astrophysics module is assessed by 4 pieces of coursework.

Preparation/Reading list

To prepare for this specialisation area, we recommend reading “An Introduction to modern cosmology” by Andrew Liddle.