I participated in an event organized to honor 100 years of IAU. I argued that joining SDSS-V would be a good idea to complement existing efforts in photometry and spectroscopy of variable stars, and survey involvement like ASAS-SN and LSST. I also suggested that we should form “International research school in astronomy in Prague/Czech Republic” to attract great PhD students. I learned later that others have proposed similar idea in the past. On a related note, I advocated for establishing “Kepler Postdoctoral Fellowship” to bring excellent early career scientists.
Author: opejcha
Nadia Zakamska visit
Nadia Zakamska (Johns Hopkins) visited our group and the department this week, giving talks on supermassive black holes and exoplanets. She met with students and postdocs and we also discussed some exciting stellar science. The visit was organized with the help of Role Models in Physics small grant from the US Embassy in Prague.
Czech participation in LISA
A number of people of from around Prague collectively joined LISA consortium. Excited to see where the quest for gravitational waves takes in 2030s and beyond. Our group now has website czechLISA.cz.
Workshop on Laboratory Astrophysics
I spoke about core-collapse supernovae and stellar mergers at ELI Beamlines. A lot of interest in radiative shock and their nonlinear thin-shell instability.
Visit at IAC
I visited for couple weeks IAC at La Palma with the gracious support of the Erasmus+ program Per Aspera Ad Astra Simul and graciously hosted by David Jones. Discussed binary, triple (and quadruple stars), planetary nebulae, luminous red novae and other fun projects.
Visit in the NYC area
This week I visited Columbia, Princeton/IAS, Stony Brook (Astronomy seminar) and Center for Computational Astrophysics (lunch talk).
233rd Meeting of AAS
Great meeting in Seattle, where I presented a talk on circumstellar material created by merging stars. Great discussions, meeting new people, ideas for projects.
Petr Kurfürst moved to Prague
Very happy that Petr Kurfürst moved to Prague to work with us full-time on (radiation) hydrodynamics of transients.
Visit of Bernhard Müller
We had a pleasure to host Bernhard Müller from Monash University who gave a special relativistic seminar on “Unravelling the mysteries of exploding massive stars”.
Workshops in Paris
Most of our team moved for couple to Paris to attend two meetings nearly coincident in space and time: Ondřej went to the LISA Astrophysics Working group workshop and Michał attended Gaia consortium meeting. Found a little bit of time to visit the grave of Urbain Le Verrier, one of the discoverers of Neptune.