A new £2m supercomputer which will help scientists study the universe has got the go-ahead after funding was awarded to the University of Leicester.

It will be used by academics to help them understand the formation of stars and planets.

The university has been selected as one of four sites to host national high performance computing (HPC) facilities.

Dr Mark Wilkinson from the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the University of Leicester is the principal scientist for the project. He said: “This is incredibly exciting news. We will now be able to carry out the largest and most detailed simulations of planets, stars and galaxies that have ever been performed and answer questions that we could not even have asked just a few years ago.”