Next Colloquia

Abstract not available

• Speaker: Selma de Mink (MPA)
• Thursday 30 April 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy (and online - details to be sent by e-mail).
• Series: The Kavli Lectures; organiser: es771.

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Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes are the most abundant exoplanets discovered in our galaxy to date. However, much of their nature and origin remains shrouded in mystery. Generally speaking, super-Earths and sub-Neptunes are thought to have formed  as one population with primordial hydrogen-dominated envelopes. However, most super-Earths lost their primordial atmospheres via thermally driven winds. In my talk, I will present new planet formation and evolution models that include the interplay between physics and chemistry and apply them to Earth, super-Earths and sub-Neptunes. I will show that magma ocean – atmosphere interactions expected in sub-Neptune exoplanets lead to signatures in their transmission spectra that are readily observable with JWST . In addition, hydrogen is efficiently sequestered into the interior, oxidizing iron and endogenously producing water. I will conclude by discussing possible parallels between Earth’s formation and that of super-Earths, shedding new light on Earth’s primary water reservoir, origin of the light elements in its iron core and oxidation state.

• Speaker: Prof Hilke Schlichting, Professor of Exoplanets & Planetary Science; Associate Dean for Research, Physical Sciences, UCLA
• Tuesday 12 May 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Ruby Ng.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Speaker to be confirmed
• Tuesday 12 May 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Ruby Ng.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Speaker to be confirmed
• Friday 10 April 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Deryck Thake.

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Black holes are the strangest prediction of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. The boundary around a black hole, known as the event horizon, is incredibly challenging to observe under normal conditions. However when a black hole consumes nearby material, it powers a system emitting partides and light. With a precise enough telescope, we can even see this as a ring of light surrounding a dark depression.

In 2017, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a planet-sized array of radio telescopes, directly imaged this ring around two supermassive black holes. These iconic images mark both a culmination of a century of discovery and the beginning of a new chapter, with implications ranging from galaxy formation to the mystery of the highest energy particles detected on Earth.

In a talk mixing history, results, and personal anecdotes, I will convey the wonder of “seeing” the Universe in a new light, and sometimes with no light at all. I will also explore what lies on the horizon, as multi-messenger observations and advances in theoretical modelling converge on some of the deepest unsolved problems in physics.

• Speaker: Sera Markoff, Plumian Professor in Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy
• Thursday 07 May 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Joanna Carruthers.

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Black holes are the strangest prediction of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. The boundary around a black hole, known as the event horizon, is incredibly challenging to observe under normal conditions. However when a black hole consumes nearby material, it powers a system emitting partides and light. With a precise enough telescope, we can even see this as a ring of light surrounding a dark depression.

In 2017, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a planet-sized array of radio telescopes, directly imaged this ring around two supermassive black holes. These iconic images mark both a culmination of a century of discovery and the beginning of a new chapter, with implications ranging from galaxy formation to the mystery of the highest energy particles detected on Earth.

In a talk mixing history, results, and personal anecdotes, I will convey the wonder of “seeing” the Universe in a new light, and sometimes with no light at all. I will also explore what lies on the horizon, as multi-messenger observations and advances in theoretical modelling converge on some of the deepest unsolved problems in physics.

• Speaker: Sera Markoff, Plumian Professor in Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy
• Thursday 07 May 2026, 16:00-17:15
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Joanna Carruthers.

Add to your calendar or Include in your list

Black holes are the strangest prediction of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. The boundary around a black hole, known as the event horizon, is incredibly challenging to observe under normal conditions. However when a black hole consumes nearby material, it powers a system emitting partides and light. With a precise enough telescope, we can even see this as a ring of light surrounding a dark depression.

In 2017, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a planet-sized array of radio telescopes, directly imaged this ring around two supermassive black holes. These iconic images mark both a culmination of a century of discovery and the beginning of a new chapter, with implications ranging from galaxy formation to the mystery of the highest energy particles detected on Earth.

In a talk mixing history, results, and personal anecdotes, I will convey the wonder of “seeing” the Universe in a new light, and sometimes with no light at all. I will also explore what lies on the horizon, as multi-messenger observations and advances in theoretical modelling converge on some of the deepest unsolved problems in physics.

• Speaker: Sera Markoff, Plumian Professor in Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy
• Thursday 07 May 2026, 16:00-17:15
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: joanna.carruthers.

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The Milky Way contains of order 100 million stellar-mass black holes. Yet, fewer than 100 black hole candidates are known in the Milky Way, and only about 25 are dynamically confirmed. Our view of the black hole population has been shaped almost entirely by observations of X-ray binaries and gravitational wave sources, both of which represent rare outcomes of binary evolution. I will discuss recent efforts to uncover the much larger population of Galactic black holes in non-interacting binaries, focusing particularly on astrometry from the Gaia mission. Compared to previous surveys, Gaia is revealing post-interaction binaries in wider orbits, whose properties are difficult to explain with standard binary evolution models. I will discuss how the Gaia catalogs can be leveraged for statistical inference, despite their complex selection function, and how they can discriminate between competing formation models.

• Speaker: Kareem El-Badry, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology
• Thursday 12 March 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, IoA (tea at 3:30 pm).
• Series: The Eddington Lectures ; organiser: Ruby Ng.

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This decade is an exciting new era in studies of galaxy evolution, with dramatic advances driven by an array of novel observational capabilities from ground and space, culminating with the advent of the Extremely Large Telescope. This talk will focus on “cosmic noon”, the redshift z~1-3 epoch when the bulk of stars in present-day galaxies were formed. I will discuss key progress in our understanding of galaxy mass and structural growth, dynamics, gas, star formation, and feedback; highlight our changing picture of the precursor stages at z>3; and outline exciting prospects for the coming years.

• Speaker: Natascha M. Forster Schreiber
• Thursday 05 March 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Jan Scholtz.

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Stars are the fundamental building blocks of galaxies, yet many do not evolve in isolation. Instead, they reside in interacting systems—binaries, triples, and higher-order multiples—where stellar interactions can radically alter stellar evolution, trigger dramatic transients, and lead to bursts of gravitational wave emission. The rise of large-scale time-domain surveys has transformed this field, delivering unprecedented samples of stellar systems, electromagnetic transients, and gravitational wave events while simultaneously raising the bar for theoretical modeling.

In this talk, I focus on two key challenges. Firstly, I examine the population of wide post-interaction binaries. Recent observations show that they are overwhelmingly eccentric rather than circular, yet orbital eccentricity has been largely neglected in binary evolution models. What are we missing?

Second, I move beyond the traditional focus on singles and binaries to examine triple systems. They are increasingly recognized as common but remain poorly understood. I highlight recent progress, open questions, and how triples may emerge as key progenitors of future transient discoveries in the era of next-generation surveys.

• Speaker: Silvia Toonen University of Amsterdam
• Thursday 19 March 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Matthew Grayling.

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In the 1990s, CCDs replaced photographic plates and transformed observational astronomy. Today, GPU hardware and large language models are driving a comparable shift in how we analyse data. Astronomy has invested enormously in the current generation of instruments such as JWST , DESI, Euclid, LSST and the SKA , and many of the analyses needed to fully exploit them have, until now, been computationally prohibitive.

This is often framed as a job for neural networks. In fact, classical, interpretable statistical methods on the same GPU hardware can match or outperform neural network approaches, and the consequences go beyond speed. It marks a shift from fitting a single model to comparing hundreds, from ignoring systematics to marginalising over them, and from waiting days to acting in real time.

Large language models are driving a separate revolution, not replacing the scientist but transforming how researchers work: building and verifying complex analyses, interrogating legacy codebases, and synthesising research across large teams. In this talk I will illustrate both through results from our group, including new results on dark energy from DESI , Type Ia supernova standardisation, real-time gravitational-wave follow-up and 21-cm radio astronomy, and argue that rigorous analysis made routine, combined with LLM -assisted development under robust verification, is the start of a new scientific method.

• Speaker: Will Handley
• Thursday 19 February 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Matthew Grayling.

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The Milky Way contains of order 100 million stellar-mass black holes. Yet, fewer than 100 black hole candidates are known in the Milky Way, and only about 25 are dynamically confirmed. Our view of the black hole population has been shaped almost entirely by observations of X-ray binaries and gravitational wave sources, both of which represent rare outcomes of binary evolution. I will discuss recent efforts to uncover the much larger population of Galactic black holes in non-interacting binaries, focusing particularly on astrometry from the Gaia mission. Compared to previous surveys, Gaia is revealing post-interaction binaries in wider orbits, whose properties are difficult to explain with standard binary evolution models. I will discuss how the Gaia catalogs can be leveraged for statistical inference, despite their complex selection function, and how they can discriminate between competing formation models.

• Speaker: Kareem El-Badry, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology
• Thursday 12 March 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, IoA (tea at 3:30 pm).
• Series: The Eddington Lectures ; organiser: Ruby Ng.

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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is expected to start science operations and begin the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) in the coming weeks. Housing the 8.4-m Simonyi Survey Telescope and the world’s largest digital camera (3.2-gigapixels and a 9.6 square degree field-of-view), Rubin Observatory will spend the next ten years covering the entire visible sky from Chile every ~3 nights.

The small bodies within the Solar System originated in the construction zones that formed our planets. As the fossils left over from the era of planet formation, asteroids, comets, and Kuiper belt objects, inform our knowledge about the growth of planetesimals and planetary embryos as well as the dynamical evolution of our Solar System. Rubin Observatory will completely transform our view of the Solar System with the LSST . The orbits and broad-band photometry of LSST Solar System discoveries will provide an unprecedented view of both the Solar System’s history and the processes active today. For example, LSST will discover more asteroids that have ever been discovered by humans to date and monitor these objects for years with multi-band photometry for cometary activity and changes in brightness.

In this talk, I will present the predictions for LSST Solar System small body discoveries, Sorcha (the Solar System survey simulator developed especially to handle the challenges of the LSST data rate), and the opportunities for cutting edge science in the often-unexplored middle Solar System.

• Speaker: Meg Schwamb (Queen's University Belfast)
• Thursday 12 February 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Matthew Grayling.

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One of the best ways of studying compact objects in the Universe, such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes and objects in our Solar System, is through their brightness variations. These tend to occur on timescales of seconds and below, and hence requires specialised astronomical instrumentation. In this talk, I shall review the design and scientific highlights of the high-speed camera HiPERCAM, which is now permanently mounted on the world’s largest optical telescope – the 10.4m GTC on La Palma.

• Speaker: Vikram S Dhillon
• Thursday 26 February 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Jan Scholtz.

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The way matter is distributed on large scales is strongly sensitive to many key questions cosmologists have about the Universe, including what are the natures of dark matter and dark energy, what were the initial conditions of the Universe, and is gravity adequately described by General Relativity on all scales? The quantity, quality, and variety of observations of large-scale structure is presently undergoing a revolution, allowing us to test the standard model of cosmology and its possible extensions to levels of accuracy not previously possible. So far, a mixed picture is emerging where some tests appear perfectly consistent with the standard model while others show varying levels of tension. Key in this discussion are the theoretical predictions used to interpret the observational measurements in terms of cosmology. In this talk, I will summarise some of the current findings and discuss important systematic uncertainties on the theoretical modelling side. I will then discuss some avenues for future progress required to maximise the cosmological constraining power of forthcoming Stage IV surveys.

• Speaker: Ian McCarthy
• Thursday 22 January 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Dr Anik Halder.

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One of the best ways of studying compact objects in the Universe, such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes and objects in our Solar System, is through their brightness variations. These tend to occur on timescales of seconds and below, and hence requires specialised astronomical instrumentation. In this talk, I shall review the design and scientific highlights of the high-speed camera HiPERCAM, which is now permanently mounted on the world’s largest optical telescope – the 10.4m GTC on La Palma.

• Speaker: Vikram S Dhillon
• Thursday 12 February 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Jan Scholtz.

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Binary black holes (BHBs) embedded in dense gas hold the promise of so-called “multi-messenger astrophysics”: when they are detected both through gravitational waves (GWs) and electromagnetic (EM) observations, they will enable novel science. This is true both for massive BHBs, whose GWs will be detectable by the future LISA satellite and by on-going pulsar timing arrays (PTAs), as well as for stellar-mass BHBs detected through ground-based GW detectors. In both cases, identifying the coalescing binaries through their EM signatures will help clarify their astrophysical origin and yield novel probes of cosmology, fundamental physics, and accretion physics. In this talk, I will describe how circumbinary gas may produce characteristic EM signatures for both massive and stellar-mass BHBs, based on analytic models as well as hydrodynamical simulations. I will also argue that in both cases, some coalescing binaries may have already been detected in optical surveys, providing clues about their origin.

• Speaker: Zoltan Haiman
• Thursday 05 February 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Jan Scholtz.

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Star formation is a vital process for stellar mass growth during the evolution of galaxies. Our understanding of where stars form and how their formation is regulated across galactic disks is surprisingly incomplete. Cloud-scale observations that resolve the sites of recent (or future) star formation and allow for sampling the time evolution of the star formation process have become possible with instruments such as ALMA , HST, VLT /MUSE and recently JWST . Comprehensive surveys such as PHANGS (Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS) enabling the study of the molecular gas reservoir, dust and embedded star formation, young stellar clusters and stellar feedback at comparable resolution have provided first robust insights on how the molecular gas—star formation—stellar feedback cycle depends on environment.

• Speaker: Eva Schinnerer(MPIA)
• Thursday 29 January 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy (and online - details to be sent by e-mail).
• Series: The Kavli Lectures; organiser: es771.

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Star formation is a vital process for stellar mass growth during the evolution of galaxies.

Our understanding of where stars form and how their formation is regulated across galactic

disks is surprisingly incomplete. Cloud-scale observations that resolve the sites of recent (or

future) star formation and allow for sampling the time evolution of the star formation process

have become possible with instruments such as ALMA , HST, VLT /MUSE and recently JWST .

Comprehensive surveys such as PHANGS (Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS)

enabling the study of the molecular gas reservoir, dust and embedded star formation, young stellar

clusters and stellar feedback at comparable resolution have provided first robust insights on how

the molecular gas—star formation—stellar feedback cycle depends on environment.

• Speaker: Eva Schinnerer(MPIA)
• Thursday 29 January 2026, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy (and online - details to be sent by e-mail).
• Series: The Kavli Lectures; organiser: es771.

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Precision cosmology is entering a new golden era, with current and upcoming surveys mapping the distribution of galaxies to an unprecedented level of detail. However, uncertainties in the theoretical modelling of the Universe on small, non-linear scales remain a major roadblock to interpreting these cosmological measurements. While machine learning has greatly enhanced our ability to analyse large datasets, its “black box” nature often limits physical interpretability and trust in their results. I will discuss recent advances in modelling cosmological observables in the non-linear regime using artificial intelligence (AI), and on the impact of baryonic feedback on cosmological observables. I will introduce deep learning frameworks that are explicitly designed to be interpretable and explainable in terms of the underlying physics of interest, and demonstrate their application to properties of cosmic structures. I will then present applications to the cosmic microwave background, revealing to which parameters the temperature power spectrum is sensitive in the context of early dark energy models.

• Speaker: Hamburg University
• Thursday 20 November 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.
• Series: Institute of Astronomy Colloquia; organiser: Matthew Grayling.

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