Hot stars form an important component of our research programme. These stars have intrinsic brightnesses a million times that of our sun and they can be seen at great distances. They are burning their nuclear fuel very quickly and although they have large masses, they have lifetimes of only a few million years. Hence they are ideal for mapping the current chemical composition of our own and other galaxies.

Hot stars are also found in the haloes of spiral galaxies, but are usually lower mass objects that are near the end of their lives. We are particularly interested in stars that have exhausted their nuclear fuel and are starting to cool. Some hot stars in the halo of the Milky Way are normal high mass stars which is surprising as no star formation is thought to occur in these regions.

The programme is observationally led, with substantial allocations of observing time on ground-based telescopes (e.g. ESO, Gemini) and the Hubble Space Telescope satellite. The research also makes extensive use of our grids of stellar model atmospheres.