In November 2016, the CEA moved into the brand new Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics building, designed by the world renowned Studio Daniel Libeskind. The new building now houses all three astronomy groups in the Department of Physics, including the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation and the Institute for Computational Cosmology, as well as the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy.
![]() The new Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics building. |
Mission: Observational astronomy and astrophysics is the fundamental foundation of our understanding of the formation and evolution of stars, galaxies, black holes and large-scale structure in the Universe. The Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy’s core mission is to extend society’s knowledge and understanding of the Universe we inhabit. We achieve this by supporting our internationally-leading staff to pursue innovative research programmes and to exploit these to train the next generation of world class early-stage researchers. The expertise of our staff encompasses the key observational techniques needed to develop and exploit the next generation of multi-wavelength surveys for galaxies, black holes and large-scale structure, and the detailed study of their properties.
Research programme: The CEA's research programme makes extensive use of the world's forefront observational facilities to test advanced theoretical models of galaxy and structure formation developed in Durham. We utilise the largest ground-based optical and near-infrared telescopes including those in Chile, Hawaii, Australia and the Canary Islands, and we have been particularly successful at obtaining time on the Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array. The multi-wavelength aspects of our programme focus on sub-millimetre and radio observations from ground-based facilities in Hawaii, Spain, Australia and the Americas and X-ray observations from space-based facilities such as the Chandra, Newton and NuSTAR X-ray satellites. A key component of our research explores mass accretion onto black holes. Follow the Research Topics link to find out more about our research.
We also closely interact with staff in the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation to aid the development and commissioning of instrumentation purpose-built for studies relevant to this area. In addition we pursue a number of common projects on galaxy formation, large-scale structure and the nature of the cosmic dark matter with theoretical research staff within the Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) at Durham.
The Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy is one of three major partners in the Durham Astronomy Research Cluster. We welcome requests from individuals with strong science backgrounds who wish to join us as Research Fellows, Postdoctoral Researchers or Graduate Students.
Our latest publications
2023 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 521, 1113 (on-line)Beckett A, Morris S, Fumagalli M, Tejos N, Jannuzi B, Cantalupo S
Modelling gas around galaxy pairs and groups using the Q0107 quasar triplet
2023 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 520, 2547 (on-line)
Ryczanowski D, Smith G, Bianconi M, McGee S, Robertson A, Massey R, Jauzac M
Enabling discovery of gravitationally lensed explosive transients: a new method to build an all-sky watch list of groups and clusters of galaxies
2023 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 520, 6091 (on-line)
Deason A, Koposov S, Fattahi A, Grand R
Unravelling the mass spectrum of destroyed dwarf galaxies with the metallicity distribution function
2023 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 520, 4134 (on-line)
Hartley K, Farley O, Townson M, Osborn J, Wilson R
First on-sky demonstration of a scintillation correction technique using tomographic wavefront sensing
Contact Details
Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy,Ogden Centre for Fundament Physics - West,
Department of Physics,
Durham University,
South Road,
Durham DH1 3LE
Tel: 44 (0)191 3343635
Latest News
November 2022:
Durham graduate named new
generation astronaut
July 2022:
* 12 Durham astronomers
in top 100 UK rankings
May 2022:
* What does an
astronomer actually do?
January 2022:
* Largest ever 3-D
map of the Universe
* Memoir of Sir Arnold
Wolfendale
Conferences/Workshops

Durham-Edinburgh
eXtragalactic Workshop,
Edinburgh, Jan 10-11th 2023.