Peter Barnes' Research Page

I am interested in a number of research topics as shown below. My main area of expertise, though, is in radio (cm, mm, submm, infrared) observations of the Milky Way's insterstellar medium (ISM) and the star formation within it. I am currently working on a number of projects in these areas, some of which would be suitable for student projects, or collaborations with colleagues. Click on the links for more information.

Star formation in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies:
  • CHaMP
    		•  The Galactic Census of High- and Medium-mass Protostars is a comprehensive multiwavelength survey of the star formation activity along the Milky Way's Carina Spiral Arm, including unbiased samples of the massive molecular clouds and of the young, deeply embedded clusters that form in them.
  • c2d: From Cores to Disks
    		•  Part of the Spitzer Legacy Survey, this is a survey of the southern c2d sample in several 3mm molecular lines.
  • ThrUMMS
    		•  The Three-mm Ultimate Mopra Milkyway Survey is a complete, arcminute-resolution, multi-transition molecular survey of most of our Galaxy's Fourth Quadrant, overlapping with many recent and current satellite and ground-based surveys such as GLIMPSE, Hi-GAL, and ATLASGAL.
  • CNB-fields
    		•  The CN-bright Magnetic Fields project is a spinoff survey of molecular clouds from ThrUMMS+CHaMP that have bright enough CN emission to map magnetic field strengths at ALMA via the Zeeman effect, a notoriously difficult problem.
    Astrochemistry
    The interstellar medium
    Surfaces & atmospheres of solar system bodies Main Belt Asteroids and icy outer solar system objects (Uranus, Neptune, Plutinos and their moons) have unusual properties at long (cm and mm) wavelengths, and are useful calibrators at shorter (submm) wavelengths.
    Radiative transfer problems
    Supernova remnants
    Astronomical databases The Milky Way Concordance is a general-purpose graphical catalogue tool for ISM studies.
    Image analysis techniques