Me

Ross Collins

Survey Astronomy Software Developer

Wide-Field Astronomy Unit (WFAU)
Institute for Astronomy (IfA)
University of Edinburgh (UoE)
Royal Observatory Edinburgh (ROE)

I'm a software developer in the wide-field astronomy unit of the IfA at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. I work on the WFCAM and VISTA Science Archives (WSA & VSA; known together as the VISTA Data Flow System, VDFS) as well as for the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (Gaia DPAC).

Previously, I was a postgraduate student in both the Astronomy group and the Computational Methods group of the Computational Engineering Design research group of Southampton University. My PhD research was to produce a computer model of radiative transfer in astrophysical jets, and was conducted under the supervision of Dr. Christian Kaiser, and Professor Simon Cox. Find out more in my research page. I also taught an Astronomy GCSE course, the notes for which are located here.

Before my PhD began in October 2001 I had spent the previous four years studying for my MSci degree in Physics with Astrophysics at the University of Birmingham, where my final year project on Modelling the Evolution of Superbubbles was carried out under the supervision of Dr. Ian Stevens. My astronomy career path began with my involvement in the Luton Astronomical Society who encouraged me to add Astronomy onto my GCSE exam list, and buy an 8" Newtonian telescope.

My fellow astro postgraduates and I gave a series of talks to the public under the title Astronomy Now, at the Beaulieu Out of Town Centre. The HTML version of my talk More than Just Pretty Pictures: Astronomical Investigations, from the first session, is here.
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Public Talks