First Announcement

Dear colleagues,

we would like to draw your attention to a two-day workshop about 'Life and Death of Hot Stars' we are organising as part of the Annual Meeting of the Astronomische Gesellschaft in Bamberg from 25 to 26 September 2014:

Abstract

The population of hot stars is very diverse, ranging from young massive main sequence stars, giants and supergiants to old and evolved objects like white dwarfs and their immediate progenitors. Studying those stars helps us to understand key problems of stellar astrophysics like the formation of massive stars, close binary interactions, radiation-driven winds, and the final stages of stellar evolution. Solving these problems is central to our understanding of related issues like supernovae, with important implications for cosmology, and the history of chemical enrichment in galaxies. Although considerable progress has been made in the last decade, analysing hot stars remains challenging, because peculiar chemical compositions, NLTE effects, mass-loss, rotation, variability, and binarity have to be taken into account. Trying to make sense out of the observational evidence makes us aware of the shortcomings in stellar evolution models.

Motivation

This splinter meeting aims at bringing together the hot star community, both observers and theorists, for giving the opportunity to present recent contributions to the field and to discuss the open issues. We would like to invite you to contribute both oral and poster presentations. The deadline for abstract submission is 18 August 2014.

Registration

For registration and abstract submission please use the appropriate website:

Registration for AG meeting

(note that the deadline for early registration is 31 July 2014)

AG Meetings

Although the Annual Meeting of the Astronomische Gesellschaft is mostly organised by the German community, it is not intended to be a national meeting. It is an international conference covering a broad range of topics and all the talks and posters are of course in English. This year it is entitled 'The Variable Sky: from Tiny Variations to Big Explosions'. The plenary sessions in the morning are devoted to review and highlight talks by invited speakers from different fields (e.g. Margaret Geller, Conny Aerts, Tom Marsh, Sri Kulkarni). In the afternoons 11 specialized workshops (splinter sessions) are offered. Participants can then freely arrange their own program. We want to point out that splinter sessions about asteroseismology, planets and explosive stellar transients are scheduled for 23 and 24 September. Those might be interesting for some of you as well and they are scheduled not to overlap with our workshop. Please have a look at the conference website for details.

This kind of meeting is especially useful for students, because it provides a broad overview together with the opportunity for scientific contributions. Funds for financial support are available and can be requested from the organisers of the AG meeting. Deadline 8 Aug 2014 , see Travel Grants by the AG

Bamberg

Bamberg is a beautiful medieval town in the middle of Germany. It is part of UNESCOs World's Cultural Heritage and centre of the Franconian beer region, which has the highest density of breweries in the world. The mix of locals, students and tourists make it a very lively town with lots of restaurants, bars and beergardens - and therefore a perfect place to host a conference. Of course we will make sure that the social part of the meeting is not neglected and arrange some casual gatherings on Thursday and Friday evening.

We are looking forward to meet you in Bamberg!

Marcelo Miller-Bertolami, Helge Todt, Stephan Geier (Co-chairs)