Study Jupiter's atmoshpere

we are interested in the ever-changing atmosphere of Jupiter and the occurrence of those giant red spots.

Jupiter which are captured by Point grey camera

Project leader : Dr. Saran Poshyachinda, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Astronomy is the domain of slow phenomena, with stellar and galactic evolution taking place on scales of millions and billions of years. However, there are also numerous processes taking place on much faster scales. These are often not detectable in standard observations which are generally limited to time resolutions longer than 1 second. At NARIT, we investigate phenomena such as occultations of stars by the Moon, leading to accurate measurements of stellar diameters, to the discovery and study of close binary stars with separations of just a few milliseconds of arc, and to the detection and investigation of circumstellar matter surrounding both very young and very evolved stars. NARIT is now one of the most advanced and productive poles for this area of research in the world. Other high temporal resolution research carried out at NARIT involves stochastic phenomena observed in the light curves of stellar sources such as flickering, and the transits and occultations of planets and other substellar bodies both in the Solar Sytem and around other stars.

Cataclysmic variables

A cataclysmic variable (CV) is one of the most complicated yet most interesting close binary system to be observed. Hosting a white dwarf primary star and low mass main sequence secondary companion, this system exhibits many fascinating phenomena such as outbursts, superhumps, oscillations, and flickering. CV research in NARIT covers both observational and theoretical studies for different type of CV sub-classes, including magnetic and non-magnetic systems,  AM CVn star, and detached white dwarf binary. We are focusing on doing the follow-up observation of selected stars to obtain the orbital parameters of these systems. Aside from the observational research, we investigate the evolution scenario and population synthesis study of non-magnetic CV and post common-envelope binary.

NARIT EXTragalactic astronomy and COSmology (NEXTCOS) group

What causes the late-time accelerating expansion of the Universe? And how do the large-scale structures (e.g. galaxies, groups and clusters of galaxies) form and evolve? These are the key main questions of modern cosmology and astrophysics. We can further our understanding on these important questions through astronomical observations such as cosmological redshift surveys of galaxies and quasars, utilising probes such as Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO), Redshift-Space Distortions (RSD), gravitational weak lensing and Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect. We are also interested in using measurements of primordial non-Gaussianity in the galaxy clustering to learn more about physics of the early Universe. Other research interests include galaxy formation theory and the role Super-Massive Black Holes (SMBH) as an engine of the Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) plays on the galaxy evolution.

Asteroseismology of stars across H-R diagram

Asteroseismology  is a rapidly-developing, powerful tool of stellar astrophysics  that accurately measures stellar parameters by virtue of stellar acoustic oscillation frequencies. The acoustic spectrum is directly sensitive to the structure of stellar interiors. Thus, this is a direct advantage of asteroseismology  compared to classical spectroscopic and photometric methods. Asteroseismology research  in NARIT is focused  on oscillating mass-accreting components of interacting eclipsing binary stars, rapidly-oscillating magnetic chemically-peculiar stars  and other types of variable stars across H-R diagram..

Exoplanet search

Extra-solar planet discoveries  and studies have become an attractive, fruitful and challenging area  of modern astrophysics. Nearly two thousands of extrasolar planet have been discovered.  Studies of exoplanet  are important due to the potential to address fundamental questions about our Solar System and the theories of planetary formation. The NARIT extra-solar planet search group is focused on both spectroscopic radial velocity and transit time variation methods of planet detections.

Active galactic nuclei

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are well known relativistic objects by their extremal properties such as flux variability from radio to gamma waves, the lagest luminosity in our Universe. The variability time-scales decrease with decreasing of observing wavelength and drop to several days in X-ray.It gives the restriction to the size of central engine, that cannot be larger few light-days. The mass of the central object can be estimated through the luminosity and kinematics of gas and stars, and it is within the range of 10^6-10^10 Msun. So, only one theoretically known object, black hole, can fit to these parameters. A galaxy hosting an AGN is called an active galaxy. The activity in galactic nuclei (AGN) has been studied extensively by many research teams since its discovery in the 1950s. The determination of a size of the ?broad-line region? (BLR) and mass of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) is one of the most important research area of AGN study despite a lot attention that was paid in the last years. In this term it is very important to know the internal properties responsible for nuclear activity. Their could be revealed through study of isolated AGNs