English
What we do
Welcome to the Extra-galactic research group of SAI!
As one can guess from the title, the group's main research direction is everything going on beyond our Galaxy as well as those loosely defined things that makes the Milky Way one of the billions of galaxies in our Universe. The latter, as a whole, is also the subject of our research. Traditionally, we pay a lot of attention to kinematic and chemical evolution of galaxies, galaxy clusters and what they are made of - including the dark stuff. An important direction of our research is gravitational lensing.
We are interested in both theory - whether analytical or numerical - and observational programs. Our staff members have access to large optical and radio telescopes - both in Russia and abroad - and astronomical databases.
The principles of the Group's work, as formulated by its head, Prof. Anatoly Zasov are:
- Research in the Group must not get stuck on a single problem - even if it is very important and trendy.
- All the important results should be subject to a collective discussion.
- Active collaboration with members of other research groups, both in SAI and other institutes, is absolutely essential.
- Members of the group should be involved in teaching as only this may guarantee the inflow of talented young colleagues. Without the latter, any group has now bright future.
We encourage students to take part in our research and to accept responsibility for solving the key problems. Normally, we have a number of projects to offer to the colleagues interested in any area of our broad research agenda. A list of potential honours and diploma projects can be found at our Student information pages. One should keep in mind, however, that any such list is in a way outdated - after all, it would not be called research if one could plan every step of it in advance.
Just drop in and enquire what we are interested in at the moment. Or, perhaps, there is something you are ready to get us interested in?
Structure of the Group
The group is one of the most effective ones in terms of output-to-resource ratio in SAI. At the moment, we have eight permanent staff members (four of which - on part-time basis), including four Doctors of Science and three Philosophy Doctors. Tradiaronally, there are a few advanced students and/or PhD candidates involved with the Group.
The Group's head is MSU Prof. Anatoly Zasov. Separate major directions are lead by the Leading researcher of SAI Ol'ga Sil'chenko, Principal researcher of SAI Artur Chernin and a Senior researcher of SAI, Leading researcher of ITEP Serguei Blinnikov. Researchers Oxana Abramova, Anastasya Kasparova, Lyudmila Petrochenko and Artem Tuntsov are also on the staff.
You can get a more detailed look at staff members and their research interest by visiting the related pages.
Group history
Sternberg Astronomical Institute is older than the entire field of extra-galactic astronomy. Throughout its history, the institute has been at the forefront of astronomy and thus far has a reputed history of extra-galactic research. It is sufficient to name Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov, the leading author of the world-renowned Morphological galaxy catalogue. The course of research has not ceased since and extra-galactic matters have, for instance, been the major theme for the current head of our group, Prof. Zasov all along his scientific career.
Studing galaxie involves many directions of physics and astronomy - from the celestial mechanics to stellar astronomy, from the physics of elementary particles to cosmology. It is therefore of little surprise that before our Group was formed, extragalactic research had been pursued in different subdivisions of SAI - most impostantly, Emission-line stars and galaxies research group, Galaxy and variable stars research group and Stellar astrophysics research group.
At the same time, the Extra-galactic astronomy group as an element of the institute structure remains the youngest subdivision of SAI. Officially, it was created by the MSU Board of Academics only in spring of 2007. The first seminar of the group was held on the 15th of June, 2007, and the dynamics has held steadily since. At the moment, there are only four full-time members of staff here. But as is the case with extra-galactic astronomy in general, the Group has a bright future. The development of the observational facilities of SAI - in particular, the Caucasian mountain observatory equipped with a modern telescope would contribute to this future. Gradual increase in the number of staff members as well as the rapid progress of young researches would help, too.
Recent publications
Below, a list of recent publications by staff members is given - normally, it would be the most recent paper for each member of the group and/or the most recent first-author one.
Chilingarian I., Prugniel P., Sil'chenko 0., Koleva M.
NBursts: Simultaneous Extraction of Internal Kinematics and Parametrized SFH from Integrated Light Spectra
2007, astro-ph/0709.3047
Sil'chenko 0.K., Age and metallicity of the bulges in lenticular galaxies
2007, astro-ph/0709.2928
Chernin A.D., Karachentsev I.D., Makarov D.I., Kashibadze O.G., Teerikorpi P., Valtonen M.J., Dolgachev V.P., Domozhilova L.M.
Local dark energy: HST evidence from the expansion flow around Cen A/M83 galaxy group
2007, astro-ph/0704.2753
Chernin A.D., Karachentsev I.D., Valtonen M.J., Dolgachev V.P., Domozhilova L.M., Makarov D.I.
The very local Hubble flow: simulating the transition from chaos to order
2007, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 467, 933-941
Woosley S.E., Kasen D., Blinnikov S., Sorokina E., Type Ia Supernova Light Curves
2007, Astrophysical Journal, 662, 487-503 (astro-ph/0609562)
Conn B., Lane R., Lewis G., Gil-Merino R., Irwin M., Ibata R., Martin N., Bellazzini M., Sharp R., Tuntsov A., Ferguson A..
The AAT/WFI survey of the Monoceros Ring and Canis Major dwarf galaxy - I. From l = (193-276)њ
2007, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 376, 939-959 (astro-ph/0701664)
Zasov A.V., Abramova O.V., The star-formation efficiency and density of the disks of spiral galaxies
2006, Astronomy Reports, 50, 874-886 (astro-ph/0611593)
Kasparova A. V., Zasov A. V., Galaxies with anomalously high abundances of molecular hydrogen
2006,
Astronomy Reports, 50, 626-637 (astro-ph/0609660)
Tuntsov A.V, Lewis G.F., On a systematic bias in surface brightness fluctuations based distances due to gravitational microlensing
2006, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 371, 1259-1268 (astro-ph/0606719)
Blinnikov S.I., Ropke F.K., Sorokina E.I., Gieseler M., Reinecke M., Travaglio C., Hillebrandt W., Stritzinger M.
Theoretical light curves for deflagration models of type Ia supernova
2006, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 453, 229-240 (astro-ph/0603036)
Zasov A.V., Petrochenko L.N., Cherepashchuk A.M. Supermassive Black Holes: Relation to Dark Halos
2005, Astronomy Reports, 49,362-367 (astro-ph/0412560)
Abramova O.V., Averin P.V., Bychkov K.V., The Nonthermal Radio Emission of WR 140 in a Model with Colliding Two-Phase Winds
2003, Astronomy Reports, 47, 31-37
Петроченко Л.Н., Шугаров С.Ю., V1177-AQUILAE, 1983, Астрономический циркуляр, 1272, 8
Contacts
The group residence is the Room 22 of SAI (at the end of the western lobby on the first floor of institute building on Vorob`yovy Gory). Some staff members are more likely to be found at other places - e.g., SAI Room 44, which is familiar to most students as the General astrophysics practicum lab.
Phone: +7 495 939 1660
Fax: +7 495 932 8841
You can read more about how you get to the institute in Moscow here.
