Dr Alexander Scholz

Director of the University Observatory and Reader

Phone: +44 (0)1334 46 1668
Email: as110@st-andrews.ac.uk

Teaching

My teaching is focused on observational and introductory astrophysics. I am module coordinator and lecturer in first year astrophysics. I also coordinate the observational components of the MSc program in astrophysics. I provide observing training at our local telescopes for postgraduate and undergraduate students. In addition, I teach introductory astronomy for non-science students.

Research areas

I am an observational astronomer working on problems in star and planet formation. Since 2006 I am leading the project SONYC, which conducts unbiased extremely deep imaging and spectroscopy surveys of nearby star forming regions, with the goal to find all young brown dwarfs and free-floating planetary mass objects. This project will continue in the next years with new facilities like James Webb Space Telescope and with Gaia. I analyse accretion and disks of young sources, with the goal to constrain formation scenarios for stars, brown dwarfs and planets. Using time-domain observations, I study rotation, surface properties, and the dynamical environments of young stellar and substellar objects. I am working with 8-m telescopes like the ESO/VLT and Subaru, with space telescopes like Spitzer and Kepler, with submm facilities like ALMA and SMA, with the robotic 1-m telescoes of the Las Cumbres Observatory, and with our local James Gregory Telescope, the largest telescope in Scotland.

PhD supervision

Daniel Capela

Selected publications

Open access
Revealing the substellar population of IC 1396: a spectroscopic survey of brown dwarfs in the region
Damian, B., Jose, J., Scholz, A., Román Zúñiga, C., Shridharan, B., Suárez, G., Downes, J. J., Das, S. R., Kartha, S. S. & Gupta, S., 1 Aug 2026, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 550, 3, 15 p., stag1255.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access
Substellar population of the young massive cluster RCW 36 in Vela
do Brito do Vale, A. R. G., Mužić, K., Bouy, H., Almendros-Abad, V., Bayo, A., Capela, D., Scholz, A., Bik, A., Suárez, G., Cieza, L., Peña Ramírez, K., Bertin, E. & Schödel, R., 17 Feb 2026, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Astronomy & Astrophysics. 706, p. A149
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access
The age sequence of young clusters in Perseus: estimating ages from mass distributions
Pavlidou, T., Scholz, A. & Muzic, K., 1 Mar 2026, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 546, 3, 12 p., stag160.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access
Detection of hydrocarbons in the disk around an actively-accreting planetary-mass object
Flagg, L., Scholz, A., Almendros-Abad, V., Jayawardhana, R., Damian, B., Mužić, K., Natta, A., Pinilla, P. & Testi, L., 20 Jun 2025, In: Astrophysical Journal. 986, 2, 6 p., 200.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access
Discovery of an accretion burst in a free-floating planetary-mass object
Almendros-Abad, V., Scholz, A., Damian, B., Jayawardhana, R., Bayo, A., Flagg, L., Mužić, K., Natta, A., Pinilla, P. & Testi, L., 10 Oct 2025, In: Astrophysical Journal Letters. 992, 1, 7 p., L2.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access
Disks around young free-floating planetary-mass objects: ultradeep Spitzer imaging of IC348
Seo, H. H. & Scholz, A., 1 Mar 2025, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 537, 3, p. 2579-2585 7 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access
Hubble's Variable Nebula I: ripples on a big screen
Lightfoot, J. & Scholz, A., 1 Jun 2025, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 540, 1, p. 52-59 8 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access
Spectroscopy of free-floating planetary-mass objects and their disks with JWST
Damian, B., Scholz, A., Jayawardhana, R., Almendros-Abad, V., Flagg, L., Mužić, K., Natta, A., Pinilla, P. & Testi, L., 1 Aug 2025, In: Astronomical Journal. 170, 2, 11 p., 127.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access
The Outbursting YSOs Catalogue (OYCAT)
Peña, C. C., Lee, J.-E., Herczeg, G., Johnstone, D., Ábrahám, P., Antoniucci, S., Audard, M., Ashraf, M., Baek, G., Garatti, A. C. O., Carvalho, A., Cieza, L., de Miera, F.C.-S., Eislöffel, J., Froebrich, D., Giannini, T., Green, J., Ghosh, A., Guo, Z. & Hillenbrand, L. & 22 others, Hodapp, K., Jheonn, H., Jose, J., Kim, Y.-J., Kóspál, Á., Lee, H.-G., Lucas, P. W., Magakian, T., Nagy, Z., Naylor, T., Ninan, J. P., Peneva, S., Reipurth, B., Scholz, A., Semkov, E., Sicilia-Aguilar, A., Singh, K., Siwak, M., Stecklum, B., Szabó, Z. M., Wolf, V. & Yoon, S.-Y., 29 Sept 2025, In: Journal of the Korean Astronomical Society. 58, 2, p. 209-230 22 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access
The substellar population in Corona Australis
Mužić, K., Almendros-Abad, V., Baptista, A., Scholz, A., Capela, D., Pearson, S., Damian, B., doBrito-DoVale, A., Rom, T. & Jayawardhana, R., Sept 2025, In: Astronomy & Astrophysics. 701, 13 p., A147.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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