Research & Industry

Planets & Stars

Award-winning researchers in Physics & Astronomy are investigating stars to reveal their magnetic processes, power output variations, rotation rates, convection, radiation transfer, chemical composition, surface features, and their modes of formation. Western astronomers have expert knowledge on high- and low-resolution spectroscopy, time-series analysis, and complex theoretical and numerical modeling of gas, radiation, and stellar atmospheres. Features of meteors, comets, and asteroids that are of specific interest include their orbits, tracking and trajectory analysis, meteor showers, chemical analysis, and cartography. We have specialists in radio, radar and optical observations, and in the analysis of satellite data. We support an exquisitely maintained, significant research observatory at Elginfield. Likewise seismologists in Earth Sciences contribute substantially to our understanding of Earth's structure and the development of earthquakes, for which they have garnered substantial funding for a national seismograph network (POLARIS) through Institutional and New Opportunties CFI-OIT, ORDCF and PREA awards. Other significant activities include laser probing of the atmosphere, and internationally acclaimed research on the mineralogy and petrology of planets, especially Earth.

The Faculty of Science has created a research group in stellar science, and make a substantial effort to become a significant Canadian presence in research on planetary bodies and stars. We propose to do so in partnership with other institutions. Western can nucleate its group in Stellar Science by drawing upon faculty spread across several departments in Science, and through strategic appointments. The faculty has already recruited a Tier 2 CRC in star formation. The meteor physics team is already recognized internationally for its excellence, and is unique in North America, a position consolidated by appointment of P.G. Brown as a tier 2 CRC. The formation of a stellar science group more generally recognizes the many natural linkages among astronomy, atmospheric studies, geophysics, geology and ecology, and the need for a transdisciplinary approach to modern stellar science.