Astronomy at high angular resolution

Recent years have seen a huge development in high-resolution astronomical techniques, which are critical to progress in many different areas of astronomy. These techniques can be divided in direct methods (Adaptive optics, lucky imaging), interferometry (including speckle imaging and spectro-astrometry), and reconstruction methods (astrotomography). This workshop aims at bringing together the different communities working on these fields and increase the synergies between them. It is indeed often necessary to combine all these techniques together in order to have a coherent and comprehensive idea of all the processes at work in a given astronomical environment.

Pubblicità

18° International meeting on Gravitational Microlensing

LCOGT is pleased to welcome the worldwide microlensing community to beautiful Santa Barbara, California for the 18th Annual International Conference. Please browse our website for details on the week’s scientific and social events.

Topics will include: 

• Microlensing Discoveries
• Microlensing Results in the Wider Context 

including planet frequency, free-floating planets, implications for planetary
formation/evolution, galactic structure and stellar mass function.

• Observing Microlensing Phenomenon

including the status & developments of ground-based survey and follow-up teams,
strategies, instrumentation, space-based missions and future opportunities.

• Lensing Theory, Modeling and Computation

Astrophysical Turbulence: From Galaxies to Planets

In astrophysics and cosmology, fluid flow occurs on a large range of scales and under very different conditions, from the dense interior of stars and planets to the highly rarefied intergalactic medium. These flows share the fact that they are generally turbulent, i.e. highly disordered both in space and time. Turbulence is one of the key processes for the structure and evolution of a large variety of geo- and astrophysical systems. The universality of astrophysical turbulence interlinks the physics of the interior of planets or stars with proto-planetary or galactic disks, as well as the intergalactic gas outside of galaxies. For example, angular momentum transport by turbulence is a central question that must beanswered to understand how galaxies or stars form, how proto-planetary disks evolve, how metals are mixed in the interstellar and intergalactic medium, or how differential rotation is established in stars and planets. Magnetic field amplification through turbulent dynamo processes is ubiquitous in planets, stars, and galaxies. The onset of instabilities due to dust particles or newly formed planets in proto-planetary disks controls the properties of the evolving structures. We can observe a variety of interactions between stars, planets and galaxies with their environment leading to the exchange of energy and (angular-) momentum. This compilation highlights the enormous potential and perspective of a combined workshop/school to discuss and deepen our knowledge in this very rapidly moving field of research.

Protostars and Planets

The Protostars and Planets series for more than two decades has served the community with state of the art compilations of the current knowledge in the fields of star and planet formation. The previous volume PPV is published in 2007, but the contents is based on the year of the corresponding conference in 2005 in Hawaii. Since then, the field of protostars and planets has advanced tremendously, from a theoretical as well as observational point of view.

Regarding observational studies of star formation, the launch of the Herschel Space Observatory opened up a new window to investigate the peak of the spectral energy distribution of young star-forming regions, and SOFIA will continue exploring that wavelength regime. While previous investigations about the initial conditions of star formation often relied on more indirect approaches, we can now study the onset of star formation and the associated physical/chemical processes in unprecedented detail. Herschel also allows us to study main interstellar cooling lines like those of atomic carbon or oxygen as well as important molecular water lines. With these information at hand, we can analyze the fundamental cooling processes of the interstellar medium. The exoplanet searching and characterization has progressed enormously. More than 400 extra-solar planets have been detected, and thanks to the Kepler mission more and more super-earth like objects are among these planets. Having large samples is important for deriving statistical characteristics of exoplanets and exoplanetary systems, and since PPV the population synthesis models to explain these systems have also progressed dramatically. Furthermore, the field of transit spectroscopy rises to adulthood, and we start obtaining spectra from extrasolar planetary atmospheres. Therefore, the whole field of exoplanetary sciences changed from searching for new objects to really characterizing the physical and chemical properties of increasing samples. Also in our theoretical understanding of how planets form there has been tremendous progress since PPV. For instance, there has been a clear paradigm shift in how planetesimals are formed from cosmic dust: The new buzz words are “gravoturbulent planetesimal formation” and “particle growth in pressure traps”.

As for the planetary birth places: By the time PPVI will be held in 2013, the amount of observational data of protoplanetary disks has multiplied: large quantities of Spitzer data are already there and published, Herschel data are currently streaming in and the first results of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) are expected. Also our knowledge about the underlying disk physics e.g. the role of the turbulence driving mechanisms has revolutionized. We just want to mention the role of magnetic Prandtl and Reynolds numbers plus global simulations for MHD instabilities and the baroclinic instability for magnetically dead zones. Our better numerical simulations of disks in combination with radiation transport lead currently to a breakthrough in the migration problem of planets. What was a catastrophe in the past is now the remedy in population synthesis models to predict and explain the observed distributions of exoplanets and thus forms the ultimate tool to test the detailed physics in the various planet formation models. Our view of protoplanetary disks therefore is (and will be) incomparable in 2013 to what it was in 2005. Similarly, theoretical (in particular numeric) star formation research has made great advances since the last volume of the PP series. While in the past many theoretical studies were forced to focus on one or two aspects of star and planet formation only, it is now feasible to engage in a multi-scale and multi-physics approach to modeling the birth of stars and planets. The ever increasing computing power and the development of novel numerical algorithms allow us to study the evolutionary sequence from cloud formation, to star formation within these clouds with unprecedented precision and predictive power. It is now possible to combine 3-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations with time-dependent chemistry and with radiative transfer calculations that allow for the self-consistent treatment of such diverse physical processes as molecular cloud formation in the turbulent multi-phase interstellar medium or studying the influence of ionizing feedback from the central high-mass star on the fragmentation and star-formation properties of the infalling envelope.

44° Annual Division on Dynamical Astronomy Meeting

The 2013 Meeting of the Division on Dynamical Astronomy will be held from 5 – 9 May 2013 in Paraty, Brazil. The annual DDA Meeting brings together top researchers in astronomy, astrophysics, planetary science, and astrodynamics for in-depth and stimulating discussions and talks on all aspects of dynamics in the space sciences. The DDA meeting features invited talks on a range of topics, contributed talks (with no parallel sessions), and posters that can be displayed throughout the entire meeting.