Danny Lennon

    Astronomer

     

    Main Research Fields

    Massive stars and star clusters, stellar evolution, stellar dynamics. I am interested in bringing together state-of-the-art observations with theory to address fundamental problems in massive star evolution, their impact on the their environment, galactic evolution and the early Universe.

     

    The figure on the left shows a density map of stars in the LMC from Gaia DR1, while the arrows show the proper motions of the brightest massive stars from the TGAS catalogue. The star arrowed in the upper right is a candidate hypervelocity star.


    Keywords

    •  Massive stars
    •  Star clusters
    •  Stellar evolution
    •  Stellar dynamics

    Ongoing collaborations

    • An HST study of proper motions of massive stars in the Tarantula Nebula and isolated massive stars in the Galactic Center (with Roeland van der Marel, Jay Anderson, Elena Sabbi, (STScI); Luigi Bedin, (Padua), Chris Evans, (ATC, Edinburgh), Selma de Mink (STScI/Amsterdam))
    • A VLT-FLAMES spectroscopic survey of massive stars and binaries in the Tarantula Nebula and HST spectroscopy of massive stars in the core of R136 (with Chris Evans, ATC, Edinburgh; Paul Crowther (Sheffield); Hugues Sana (STScI))
    • Stellar Winds at low Z including HST UV spectroscopy of massive stars in metal poor nearby dwarf galaxies. (with Miriam Garcia, Paco Najarro (CAB, Madrid); Artemio Herrero (IAC, Tenerife)
    • Using Gaia to investigate the origins of isolated massive stars in our Galaxt and the Magellanic Clouds

    Project/mission at ESA

    Head of Science Operations Division