Anthony (Tony) F.J. Moffat is an emeritus professor of

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...

at the

Université de Montréal The Université de Montréal (UdeM; ; translates to University of Montreal) is a French-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university's main campus is located in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood of Côte-de ...

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Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

, Canada. He was appointed as a fellow of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...

in 2001. Moffat's research focuses on massive stars ( Wolf-Rayet stars in particular), stellar winds, binary stars, as well as the structure and dynamics of star formation regions and galaxies.

Education

Moffat completed his Master of Science at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

in 1966. His doctorate was granted in 1970 from

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...

(Dr. rer. nat.). He then completed postdoctoral studies at

Ruhr-Universität Bochum The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began in ...

from 1970 to 1976, and was awarded of his second Dr. Habil. In 1976. In 1969 he published a paper describing the

Moffat distribution The Moffat distribution, named after the physicist Anthony Moffat, is a continuous probability distribution based upon the Lorentzian distribution. Its particular importance in astrophysics is due to its ability to accurately reconstruct point sp ...

, which combines the spread in stellar light due to

astronomical seeing In astronomy, seeing is the degradation of the image of an astronomical object due to turbulence in the atmosphere of Earth that may become visible as blurring, twinkling or variable distortion. The origin of this effect are rapidly changing v ...

and

diffraction Diffraction is defined as the interference or bending of waves around the corners of an obstacle or through an aperture into the region of geometrical shadow of the obstacle/aperture. The diffracting object or aperture effectively becomes a s ...

by the telescope and used to accurately reconstruct point spread functions of images of stars. While originally developed for images taken with photographic plates, these profiles are still widely used in astronomy today. In a series of papers beginning with a study of the

open star cluster An open cluster is a type of star cluster made of up to a few thousand stars that were formed from the same giant molecular cloud and have roughly the same age. More than 1,100 open clusters have been discovered within the Milky Way galaxy, and ...

NGC 7380 and eleven other clusters, Moffat used photographic UBV photometry to identify massive star populations.

Career

Moffat was hired to the faculty of Université de Montréal in 1976. He retired, becoming an emeritus professor, in 2008. During his time at the Université de Montréal, he supervised 8 postdoctoral scientists and 14 doctoral students. This includes Alexandre David-Uraz's research into dust formation around Wolf-Rayet stars.

Honours and awards

* 1965 - Silver Medal in physics & mathematics, Victoria College University of Toronto * 1965 - Gold Medal,

Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Royal, Iowa, a ci ...

* 1998, 2000 - Killam Research Fellowship,

Canada Council for the Arts The Canada Council for the Arts (french: Conseil des arts du Canada), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It acts as the federal government's principal in ...

* 2001 - Fellow of the

* 2022 - Carlyle S. Beals Award for Outstanding Research from the

Canadian Astronomical Society The Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA; french: link=yes, La Société Canadienne d'Astronomie) is a Canadian society of professional astronomers, founded in 1971 and incorporated in 1983. The society is devoted to the promotion and advanceme ...

References

20th-century Canadian astronomers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Academic staff of the Université de Montréal Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada 21st-century Canadian astronomers University of Toronto alumni {{Canada-scientist-stub