Gaia People

Martin Barstow

University of Leicester

Martin Barstow is Professor of Astrophysics and Space Science at the University of Leicester and, for his sins, currently Head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Martin has a long-standing interest in space instrumentation and the study of white dwarf stars, using a variety of space and ground-based facilities. His initial interest in high precision astrometry emerged through exploitation of the Hipparcos archive, using the accurate stellar distances to constrain the white dwarf mass-radius relation. The desire to measure accurate distances for many more white dwarfs and to obtain astrometric mass estimates for white dwarfs in binary systems is the main scientific reason for his interest in Gaia.

Through his experience with space instrumentation and data processing Martin is leading the University of Leicester contribution to the UK Gaia data processing consortium, and expects (subject to UK funding) to be involved in the CCD calibration and characterisation elements of the CU5 coordination unit.

[Published: 02/05/2006]