Celestial Mechanics News & Events

Prof. Humberto Campins came to the University of Aveiro to talk about asteroids at the outreach centre "Fábrica Centro de Ciência Viva". Gr@v member M. ZIlhão was one of the hosts, opening the session.

ENAA 2020, the 30th National Meeting on Astronomy and Astrophysics took place, online, from 9-11 September. S. Anton was a member of the organizing committee and C. Herdeiro one of the invited speakers. More info here.

In the framework of the COST action MW-Gaia, related with the Gaia (ESA) mission, for which Gr@v member Alexandre Correia serves as MC member, a 3-days workshop on "Exoplanets in the era of Gaia" is being organised on 18-20 November 2019, at CAUP, Porto, Portugal. More info here.

On May 29th 1919 Eddington and Cottingham measured the position of stars near the sun during a total eclipse observed at the island of Príncipe, off the west African coast. Their results, together with the ones of another expedition undertaken by Crommelin and Davidson to Sobral (Brazil), were announced on November 6th 1919 and confirmed the General Theory of Relativity. This openned a new era in our understanding of gravity, space, time and matter... and made Einstein world famous.

Gr@v member Tjarda Boekholt recently travelled to the University of Concepcion in Chile. He was invited by the Theory and Starformation Group (TSG), which is led by a team of professors including Mike Fellhauer, Dominik Schleicher, Amelia Stutz and Stefano Bovino. In the first week Tjarda lectured students on the Astrophysical Multi-purpose Software Environment (AMUSE). In particular, they discussed the coupling between N-body and hydrodynamics.

The CIDMA Young Doctor Award is a prize for a researcher within 5 years after the PhD, who has made important contributions to his or her research field. The 2018 award is granted to Gr@v member Tjarda Boekholt for his recent achievements in the field of dynamical chaos in astronomical systems. During the annual meeting of CIDMA 2018, Tjarda presented his new numerical N-body code and the ability to obtain reversible solutions to highly chaotic systems.

Gr@v member T. Boekholt visited Tokyo University in Tokyo, Japan. His visit was hosted by Prof. Michiko Fujii, head of the computational astrophysics group at the Astronomy Department. T. Boekholt started a new collaboration on studying planetary dynamics and he presented his recent publication on the Slingshot mechanism in Orion.

DOPPLER (DevelOpment of PaloP knowLEdge in Radioastronomy), coordinated by Dr. Valério Ribeiro of Gr@v (University of Aveiro), is a recently funded FCT and the Aga Khan Development Network project.