Local facilities

As well as the relationships we have with a number of renowned international observatories and space telescopes, researchers within the Extrasolar Planets theme have access to a number of on-campus facilities maintained by Astrophysics.

Super Computer

All numerical simulations involved in theme activity are done on the University of Exeter Supercomputer, which consists of an SGI Altix ICE 8200 with a peak performance of 14.4 TFlop/s.  The Supercomputer was installed in December 2007, and is housed locally in the Laver building where it is monitored and maintained by colleagues in Academic Services..

The University has made a provision of £500K towards replacement of the supercomputer to support the long-term activity of the Extrasolar planets theme. The replacement is planned for 2012.

Observatory

Astrophysics maintains an on-site observatory for undergraduate teaching purposes and public events.  The observatory was built in the autumn of 2002, and contains a 10inch Meade telescope with CCD camera, filter wheel, and spectrograph.  You can read about the installation and history of the observatory here.