Brian McNamara

Office: PHY 253
Phone: (519) 888-4567 ext. 38170
Email: mcnamara@uwaterloo.ca

Education

University of Virginia
Ph.D. in Astronomy, January 1991
M.A. in Astronomy, January 1987

Villanova University
B.S. in Astronomy, May 1981

Graduate studies in supermassive black holes

Giant black holes weighing upwards of one billion times the mass of the Sun are thought to lurk at the centers of all massive galaxies. Energy released by spin breaking and infalling matter onto such supermassive black holes may be regulating the growth of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Several projects dealing with X-ray, optical, and radio observations of powerful outflows from supermassive black holes are available to interested students.

Research interests

• Galaxy Formation
• Galaxy clusters, cosmology
• Cooling flows
• The intracluster medium
• Properties of super-massive black holes
• Radio galaxies
• Stellar populations
• Optical imaging, polarimetry, spectroscopy, X-ray, radio, infrared observations
• Space astronomy: CCD detectors, optics