Institute of Astronomy

Meetings

The Institute of Astronomy plans to host one large summer conference each year. Below is a list of upcoming and previous meetings at the IoA.

Previous Meetings

PLATO Week 7

5 December 2018 - 7 December 2018

5th Dec 2018: Welcome to Cambridge

The next Plato Week 07 meeting will take place at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK from 5th to 7th December 2018. See the Plato Consortium website or the ESA Plato websites for further details. 

PLato Week 7 group photo

Meeting Website

PLATO Theory Workshop 2018

3 December 2018 - 5 December 2018

 
Welcome to the home page of the PLATO Theory meeting 2018, which will be hosted at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge. PLATO was adopted as ESA’s M3 mission in June 2017, and is currently scheduled for launch in 2026. The mission is designed to discover and characterise thousands of extrasolar planets through a combination of space-based transit detections, a ground-based radial velocity follow-up programme and asteroseismic characterisation of the host stars, yielding accurate masses, radii and ages for the detected planetary systems. The unique capabilities of the PLATO mission will allow it to discover and characterise a broad diversity of exoplanets and planetary system architectures, including terrestrial planets in the habitable zones of their stars.
 
PLATO’s key science goals include understanding the formation and evolution of planetary systems, and this goal will be achieved by using theoretical models of planetary system formation and evolution to interpret the observations. A number of theory Work Packages have been established to provide a focus for the theoretical work that needs to be undertaken in time for the mission launch. The primary purpose of this meeting is to provide an opportunity for members of these work packages to present and discuss recent relevant work, and to plan for future activities. Researchers who are not yet involved in the mission, but who are interested in becoming involved, will also be welcome to attend and present their work.
 
The plan for this two and half day meeting is to organise the sessions according to the various work packages that comprise the PLATO theory programme focussing on the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems. More information about the theory packages can be found here. When registering and submitting a title and abstract for a presentation (oral or poster), it would be useful in you could indicate which work package you wish to be affiliated with for the purpose of organising the sessions. The end of the workshop is scheduled to overlap with the PLATO Week 7 meeting that will be held at the IoA from 5-7 December. Information on previous PLATO Week meetings can be found here.
 
We look forward to seeing you in Cambridge in December 2018.

 

SOC
Yann Alibert
Melvyn Davies
Oliver Gressel
Tristan Guillot
Anders Johansen
Willy Kley
Jacques Laskar
Christoph Mordasini
Alessandro Morbidelli
Richard Nelson (co chair)
Frank Sohl
Nic Walton
Mark Wyatt (co chair)

LOC
Steve Brereton
Philippa Downing
Richard Nelson
Fatima Rasool
Amanda Smith
Mark Wyatt

Key dates: abstract and registration deadline 2 November 2018

The Laws of Star Formation: From the Cosmic Dawn to the Present Universe

2 July 2018 - 6 July 2018

This is a conference in honour of Prof. Robert Kennicutt. It will be held at the Institute of Astronomy and the adjoining Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge (UK) from Monday July 2th to Friday July 6th, 2018.

Registration is now open.

Meeting Website

Consistency of Cosmological Datasets: Evidence for new Physics?

28 May 2018 - 1 June 2018

Consistency of Cosmological Datasets: Evidence for new Physics?

  • Date: Monday 28th May - Friday 1st June 2018
  • Meeting venue: Kavli Institute for Cosmology Cambridge
  • Accommodation: Booked for all invited external participants for the nights of Sunday 27th May to Thursday 31st May inclusive at the Moller Centre, Churchill College 

LSST UK Multi-Wavelength Data Fusion Workshop

25 September 2017 - 27 September 2017

A workshop to bring together experts interested in combining multi-wavelength data from X-ray, infra-red, millimeter and radio surveys with optical data from LSST. We will discuss the challenges of combining key multi-wavelength datasets from surveys with UK leadership (e.g. XMM-Newton, VISTA, Euclid, Herschel, LOFAR, SKA) with the LSST data. We will put together a plan for bench-marking and testing existing algorithms as well as developing new methodology for data-fusion that will be relevant in the LSST era.

Meeting Website