Ondřej Pejcha

Congratulations to Milan Pešta on defending his PhD thesis on Illuminating binary star evolution with observed populations and theoretical modeling!

In the second week of September we participated in a conference Binary and Multiple Stars in the Era of Big Sky Surveys, which was held in Czech city of Litomyšl. Our group gave three talks (Cehula, Pejcha, Pešta) and engaged in a number of discussions.

Congratulations to Camille Landri to defending with flying colors her PhD thesis on Theory and observations of two stars undergoing strong interaction! Dr. Landri is very soon starting postdoctoral position at the Institute of Astronomy at KU Leuven. Good luck!

Damien Gagnier is leaving us after a bit more than three years in Prague. Damien is moving to start his second postdoc at Heidelberg Institute of Theoretical Studies in the group of Prof. Roepke and will continue working on simulations of common envelope evolution. Good luck in future work!

PhD student Milan Pešta submitted a paper on Distinguishing between light curves of ellipsoidal variables with massive dark companions, contact binaries, and semidetached binaries using principal component analysis. The paper is now under review in A&A.

PhD student Camille Landri submitted a paper on The Effect of Donor Star Rejuvenation on Common Envelope Evolution written together Paul Ricker, Mathieu Renzo and others. The paper is a result of Camille’s stay at Kavli summer school last year.

The recent EAS meeting in Padova, Italy, was a good opportunity to discuss new scientific collaborations with people who would be otherwise difficult to meet at one place.

Camille Landri spent two weeks visiting Dr. Paul Ricker at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign working on hydrodynamical simulations of common envelope evolution. The trip received support from a student grant of which Camille is a PI.

PhD student from Hamburg Observatory came to visit us in Prague for two weeks to work on common envelope hydrodynamics including planets.

Our group had a major participation in a conference held at University of Barcelona: one of the five review talks and numerous discussions with the participation of Camille Landri, Jakub Cehula, Anthony Kirilov, Damien Gagnier, and Ondřej Pejcha.