Moffat completed his Master of Science at the
University of Toronto in 1966. His doctorate was granted in 1970 from
University of Bonn (Dr. rer. nat.). He then completed postdoctoral studies at
Ruhr-Universität Bochum from 1970 to 1976, and was awarded of his second Dr. Habil. In 1976. In 1969 he published a paper describing the
Moffat distribution, which combines the spread in stellar light due to
astronomical seeing and
diffraction 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 NGC 7380 and eleven other clusters, Moffat used photographic UBV photometry to identify massive star populations. == Career ==