Alexander S. Binks

Welcome Earthlings and Travellers Alike!

You have arrived at the website of Dr Alexander Binks.

I am a post-doctoral Research Fellow in astrophysics at Keele University, in the heart of the Staffordshire countryside, UK.

I use cutting-edge astronomical observations to examine the physical properties, evolution and dynamics of young stars near the Sun.

My research is primarily focused on estimating ages for young stars in the Solar neighbourhood and studying their positions and velocities to ascertain their membership status to nearby stellar groups. My long-term goal is to navigate the birthsites and conditions from which our nearest, young stars came from by tracing back their Galactic orbits and analysing their chemical composition.

Studying our youngest stellar neighbours helps to provide complete theory of star formation, helps quantify the current local star-forming rate, reveals important information on the dissolution of young clusters and informs us about the structural and chemical evolution of galaxies. They are the prime direct-imaging targets for stars, brown-dwarfs, disks and planetary system, which lead to critical empirical tests for stellar evolution theory, improved age estimates for young stars, and better-constrained timescales for planetary formation and evolution.