I have retired but I still teach in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Also I continue to undertake research principally in the area of hot stars. These are stars with surface temperatures of about 20,000K and have a blue appearance - examples are the stars in Orion's belt. They are up to 1,000,000 times brighter than the sun with masses typically 20 times that of the sun. Hence they burn their nuclear fuels quickly and have very short lifetimes of typically a few million years. Because they are so intrinsically bright they can be seen at great distances - hence they are useful for understanding the structure of our own Galaxy and of external galaxies.

• email: p.dufton@qub.ac.uk
  
• Phone: +44 (0)2890973552
  
• Postal: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Queen's University, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT7 1NN, UK.

• Information on TLUSTY grids
• Papers since 2010
• Hot massive stars

I am a bad bridge player and an even worse golfer. However recently I have improved at golf by going from absolutely appalling to very bad.