The Star that Changed Colour

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 23rd October 2025 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: Meeting Room

Adam McMaster will be exploring HD 36451, a star in the constellation Auriga.

Although not among the most famous stars, HD 36451 holds interest because it appears in the double‑star catalogue and presents a nice example of how even “ordinary” stars carry stories worth telling.

His goal: to uncover what we do know about it, what remains uncertain, and what questions it invites for further study.

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Speaker: Adam McMaster

I’m an astronomy PhD student supervised by Professor Andrew Norton, Dr Ulrich Kolb, and Dr Hugh Dickinson. I’m working on the SuperWASP Variable Stars project on the Zooniverse.

Before starting my PhD, I worked in the web hosting industry and have many years of programming experience developing websites, web services, and related tools. Most recently I worked at the University of Oxford as a developer and cloud computing engineer with the Zooniverse.

I have a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Leicester and a BSc in Natural Sciences (Astronomy and Planetary Science) from the Open University.

Research interests

My research interests include astrophysical transients, time-domain astronomy, and applications of machine learning to the classification of astronomical data.