The discovery of strong 17 per cent circular polarisation in the IR in the Orion OMC-1 star forming region has provided a new impetus to the view that the homochirality of natural amino-acids seen in biological systems on Earth may have been triggered by asymmetric photolysis of biogenic amino acids in space.

About 50 percent of stars in our Galaxy occur in binary systems. The orbits of such systems evolve with time due to a variety of mechanisms involving mass and angular momentum loss.

It is proposed that the student presents a review of the theory of black hole formation, and a critical evaluation of the arguments used to deduce their existence in the universe.

Astronomers are often faced with the problem of constructing models for systems which are not fully constrained by observational data.

The polarised radiative transfer equations consist of four coupled first order differential equations in the four Stokes parameters which describe the radiation field.

Echelle spectroscopy (here Hamilton echelle at the Lick Observatory 3m telescope) of short period evolved binaries is the key to understanding the origin of cataclymic variables.