The Département de physique at the Université de Montréal (UdeM) offers a comprehensive study and research program leading to a master’s or doctoral degree in physics with specialization in astronomy and astrophysics. The expertise of the astronomy & astrophysics group covers a wide range of research topics, going from exoplanets, solar, stellar, galactic and extragalactic astrophysics as well as astronomical instrument development. In most cases, the different research projects involve as much observational and data acquisition techniques as theoretical analysis, numerical simulation and modeling. The relative importance of those components varies according to researcher and project.
The astronomy group operates the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic (OMM) in conjunction with Université Laval and is part of the Center for Research in Astrophysics of Quebec (CRAQ), which brings together researchers in astronomy and astrophysics from the Université de Montréal, Laval, McGill and Bishop’s. The members of the group benefit from close collaborative links with several major international research centers and hold several grants and research contracts from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Nature et Technologies (FRQNT), and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI).
The astronomy group is also the host of the Institute for Research on Exoplanet (iREx). The institute consists of a growing team of more than 40 people (professors, post-docs, research assistants and students), mainly from UdeM and McGill, all working on various research programs focused on the study of exoplanets and related fields of stellar astrophysics.