Ed Budding is, at the time of writing, an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, VUW, and also the Carter Observatory, Wellington.

In recent years he has been a visiting fellow in the Physics Department of the University of Canakkale, Turkey (COMU). He has authored a couple of books and been involved in the production of around 200 peer-reviewed articles. His main areas of research are in the astrophysics of close binary stars and the analysis of photometric and spectroscopic data, as well as exoplanet transit data and modelling.

Close binary stars attracting recent interest

Over the course of the last fifteen years, the University of Canterbury’s ‘Hercules' High resolution echelle spectrograph coupled with the 1m McLellan Telescope at Mt John Observatory has been applied to a programme of observations of close binary stars, in conjunction with recent photometric data. A particular subset of this field of study concerns bright young stars of high mass formed in OB Associations like those of Sco-Cen and Vela regions. These stellar associations are linked to large scale processes, reflecting physical conditions in the Galactic Disk. The firmer we can specify the properties of such stars; the clearer should become our understanding of relevant galactic processes. During the data analyses of this programme a number of interesting situations have come to light, concerning for example, young stars' multiplicity and pulsational behaviour. A few case studies will be reviewed that show up such surprises and challenges.

Slides: Close binary stars attracting recent interest