Exoplanets are planets orbiting other stars, beyond the Solar System. The first exoplanet was found in 1995 by my former Swiss colleagues in Geneva. Since then, more than 6000 exoplanets have been discovered. A major revelation is how common small exoplanets are: between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. A current quest of exoplanet science is to use the atmospheres of these exoplanets to understand if they are geologically active and/or are habitable using both the James Webb Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes. I will describe the long road towards using next-generation telescopes to detect biosignatures on Earth-like exoplanets, thus completing the modern version of the Copernican revolution started by Didier Queloz and Michel Mayor in 1995.

credits: NASA (R. Hurt)

Over the past thirty years astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars, worlds unlike anything in our Solar System. But how can we study the atmosphere of a planet we cannot visit, barely see, and that even our most powerful telescopes usually cannot resolve as a dot? By measuring tiny changes in starlight we can not only detect these planets, but also identify gases and clouds in their atmospheres. In my research I focus on two particular types of objects: hot Jupiters, gas giants heated to extreme temperatures by their parent star, and free-floating brown dwarfs, objects heavier than planets but too small to shine like stars. Together they reveal remarkable weather, including supersonic winds and clouds made from rock-forming minerals. In this talk, I will show how we combine astronomical observations with computer simulations to understand how these atmospheres work.

Making sense of these distant climates requires more than observations alone. We use atmospheric circulation models, originally developed for predicting weather on Earth, and adapt them to conditions far beyond anything found here. These simulations reproduce global winds and heat transport and allow us to create synthetic observations that telescopes can directly compare with measurements. By combining data and models we can infer atmospheric composition, understand how these worlds form and evolve, and place our own Solar System within the broader population of planets in our galaxy.

credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

How do we create a Universe? In this talk, I take you inside the world of computational astrophysics, where Universes are born from the laws of physics on supercomputers. Starting from a nearly uniform cosmos just after the Big Bang, numerical simulations follow the growth of structure as gravity draws matter together, gas collapses and the first galaxies ignite with stars and light.
Across 13.8 billion years of cosmic time, these simulated Universes evolve from simplicity into complexity: the cosmic web, dark matter halos, luminous galaxies, exploding stars and supermassive black holes that shape their surroundings. By turning equations into evolving worlds, supercomputers allow us to trace how galaxies form, change and interact with their environments—connecting the early Universe to the structured cosmos we see today.
But how real are these virtual Universes? Which physical processes truly shape galaxies across cosmic time? What have we learnt so far and what pressing questions keep astrophysicists up at night? Come learn how numerical simulations help us understand the astrophysics of our Universe.

credits: Dr. Aniket Bhagwat

BepiColombo is an ambitious mission to Mercury, built jointly by ESA (European Space Agency) and JAXA (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency), and hopes to study both the planet surface and the magnetosphere, giving us further insight into how planets form. The talk will give an overview of some of the daring engineering involved to get to Mercury and survive so close to the sun, and the science interest and instruments on board the spacecraft.

credits: ESA

credits: handmadewriting

The talk will focus on the design, development and first images from the observatory, and will provide insight how this kind of system brings a unique perspective into the modern world of scientific discovery of the cosmos.

The 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope at Rubin Observatory, equipped with the LSST Camera — the largest digital camera ever built — will take detailed images of the southern hemisphere sky for 10 years, covering the entire sky every few nights and creating an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition, time-lapse record — the largest astronomical movie of all time. This unique movie will bring the night sky to life, yielding a treasure trove of discoveries: asteroids and comets, pulsating stars, and supernova explosions.

credits: Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/B. Quint

Following a 50min lecture, we will continue with discussions.

Event topic: ‚Exploding‘ stars and T Coronae Borealis: Can you predict the next outburst? T Coronae Borealis, a.k.a. the „Blaze Star“, is a recurrent Nova located in the constellation Northern Crown. It is a binary system which undergoes huge brightness increases every ca 80 years, making it a unique astronomical event.

Following a 45min lecture, we will continue with discussions.

Event topic: Light deflection by Gravity.

Case 1: The Einstein ring of galaxy NGC6505

Case 2: Multiple images of a distant Supernova

Humans have pushed the frontiers of exploration in space by sending probes to the edge of our Solar System and beyond. Just how far have we traveled, and what have we seen along the way? How do we keep in touch with the most distant objects, and what is left to learn from these probes? We will look at the very old Pioneer and Voyager missions past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, as well as the New Horizons mission past Pluto and into the Kuiper Belt.

credits: curiousmatrix.com