Rob Hynes
| Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow | |
| rih@astro.soton.ac.uk | |
| Phone | +44 2380 592112 = x22112 |
| Fax | +44 2380 593910 |
I am currently employed at the University of Southampton working for Phil Charles on the Leverhulme trust funded programme: Theory and Observation of Black-hole Binaries. This is a collaborative project also involving the Open University (Carole Haswell and Sylvain Chaty) and the University of Leicester (Andrew King and James Murray).
My main interest is in Low Mass X-ray Binaries (LMXBs). These are interacting binary stars containing a low-mass star (the companion) feeding an accretion disc around a black hole or neutron star. The illustration below shows an impression of what an LMXB might look like. For more images and information on how this was produced click here.
I am particularly interested in an awkward type of LMXBs: Soft X-ray Transients (SXTs). These are the objects I studied for my Ph.D. What makes them awkward is that for most of the time they do very little - they are in a quiescent state. Once every few decades or so, however, they undergo spectacular X-ray, optical and radio outbursts, and then everyone runs to try to watch what happens. They are of particular interest because in more than half of them the compact star appears to be a black hole: SXTs are the best place to look for Galactic black holes! My main research interests, past and present, are:
How I Came to be Here
My present position was reached by a somewhat convoluted route. I completed a degree in physics from Oxford University (Lincoln College). Rather than launch straight into a Ph.D., I then went on a detour and took a Post Graduate Certificate in Education in Oxford as a prelude to teaching Science at Oxted County School, Surrey, for two years. This proved as much of an educational experience for me as for my students, but it was not how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. I decided to return to higher education, older, wiser and a little less impoverished!
To ease myself back into study again, I went to Sussex to do an M.Sc. in Astronomy. The research part of my M.Sc. involved testing the disentangling technique for performing radial velocity analysis of early-type spectroscopic binaries, working with Pierre Maxted (who ironically is also here at Southampton now.)
I then began a D.Phil. at Sussex, before moving to the Open University for the last six months of it. This was spent working for Carole Haswell on HST studies of soft X-ray transients. My thesis also included work on the soft X-ray transient XTE J2123-058 and the identification of the optical counterparts of SXTs (working with Paul Roche). I incidentally became involved in infrared observations of cataclysmic variables, trying to figure out the bizarre X-ray transient CI Cam (probably a high-mass system of some sort, but nobody quite knows!) and studying spectral variability (emission line vs. continuum) in quiescent SXTs.