Physics Of Extreme Massive Stars

The project POEMS has been promoted during the "Summer Fest" (largest youth festival in Azerbaijan) that took place in Shamakhy, Azerbaijan, from 19 - 23 August 2024. The event was organized with support from the Azerbaijan Youth Foundation, "IDEA" Public Union, COP29 Presidency, Azerbaijan Student Youth Organizations Union, Azerbaijan Volunteers' Public Union, "CAVAN" Youth Movement Public Union and joint organization of "Young Volunteers" Public Union. POEMS members from ShAO were involved in the implementation of the event, which was attended by about 2000 people.

Significant scientific results from the POEMS project have been summarized for the public and interested readers and were published on the website of the Innovation News Network. This article will appear in The Innovation Platform - Issue 18 that will be published on 3rd June 2024.

In the frame of the general assembly of the Czech Astronomical Society a "Meeting of students of astronomy and astrophysics from Czech, Slovak, and Polish universities" was organized on April 19th, 2024 in Hvězdárna a planetárium Hradec Králové. Two POEMS PhD-students out of 21 student participants that were on secondment at ASU, Melina Carla Fernandez from UNLP and Aynur Abdulkarimova from ShAO, took the opportunity and participated at this event presenting talks with title "Hydrodynamic solutions for radiation-driven winds in transition regions" and "The evolutionary status of J040901.83+329355.6", respectively.

Olga Maryeva from ASU gave a lecture on “Nebulae: from beautiful images to complicated physics” (in Russian “Туманности: от красивой фотографии к сложной физике”) for the annual seminar of astronomy teachers organized by Traektoria foundation. 93 people were registered for the seminar. These are mainly physics and astronomy teachers. But among the participants of the seminar there are also teachers who teach computer science, natural science, mathematics, algebra, geometry, biology, chemistry. The seminar took place online, 4-7 January 2024, Moscow, Russia.

POEMS member Alejandra Christen from UV organized a PhD-student seminar on 10 December 2023. The aim of this seminar was to give PhD students a platform to train presenting their research results in english and in front of other Phd students and supervisors. The event attracted 22 participants. It was held online to allow PhD-students from varius POEMS partner institutes to participate. Talks were presented by POEMS PhD-students Lorena Mercanti, Melina Fernandez and Aldana Alberici from UNLP, Suryani Guha from ASU, Anni Kasikov from UTARTU, and Daniela Turis, Natalia Machuca, and Gunther Avila from UV, among others.

POEMS members actively participated at the LARIM 2023: XVII Latin American Regional IAU Meeting that took place 27 November - 1 December 2023 in Montevideo, Uruguay. In particular, Elisson Saldanha da Gama de Almeida from UV presented a talk with title "New insights on weak winds in massive stars from hydrodynamical simulations" and a poster reporting results of our colleague Julieta Paz Sanchez Aris from ASU on "Unveiling the evolutionary states of B supergiant stars, and Aldana Aberici Adam from UNLP presented a poster with title "Exploring variability in B supergiant stars: a theoretical and photometric approach to pulsation modes and detection of binary systems". The conference was attended by 417 participants.

Olga Maryeva from ASU participated at the 55th Conference on Variable Star Research organized by the Czech Astronomical Society, that took place 17-19 November 2023 in Brno, Czech Republic. She gave an invited talk “Final stages of massive stars life: strong winds and striking variability”. The conference has been attended by 53 participants, and 35 participants jointed online. The participants were both professional and amateur astronomers, as well as students from both Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Yanina Cochetti from UNLP was invited to present her most recent results during the monthly IAU Working Group on Active B Stars seminar on 18 October 2023. Her talk had the title "IR spectroscopy of Be stars".

Julieta Sanchez Arias from ASU was invited to present her most recent results during the monthly IAU Working Group on Active B Stars seminar on 20 September 2023. Her talk had the title "Unveiling the evolutionary state of three B supergiant stars: PU Gem, ε CMa, and η CMa".

Sabina Mammadova and Gunay Hajiyeva from the Shamakhy Astrophysical Observatory participated at the International Conference XXIII Gamow International Conference: Astronomy and beyond: Cosmology and Gravitation, Astroparticle Physics, Radioastronomy and Astrobiology, which took place online 21-25 August 2023 in Odessa, Ukraine. Sabina Mammadova presented a talk “Spectral observations of the algol-type binary star δ Librae”, and Gunay Hajiyeva -- “Fundamental parameters of supergİant star hd40589 (A0Iab)”. The online conference was attended by 178 researchers.

Olga Maryeva from ASU participated at the International Conference The Wolf-Rayet phenomenon in the Universe that took place 19-23 June 2023 in Morelia, Mexico. She presented a talk with title “LAMOST J040901.83+323955.6 new Galactic [WR] star”. The conference was attended by 50 participants.

Results based on POEMS data have been presented in an oral presentation with title "Ups…! We did it again… New observational evidence for HVA events" by Kateřina Pivoňková from the Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. This Conference of Young Astronomers took place at Bezov, a famous tourist locality with wild nature in the heart of Slovakia under Bezovec hill, and was attended by 42 participants.

Aynura Hasanova from the Shamakhy Astrophysical Observatory gave a lecture about space studies to students of Azerbaijan University of Architecture and Construction (32 participants). The event was dedicated to the International Day of Human Space Flight (Yuri's Night) and took place in the Tusi-Bohm Planetarium on April 12. The lecture was attended by 32 persons.

The event was dedicated to the International Day of Human Space Flight (Yuri's Night) and took place in the Tusi-Bohm Planetarium on April 12. The lecture was attended by 32 persons.

Aynura Hasanova from the Shamakhy Astrophysical Observatory regularly teaches astronomy to children at the Republican center for the development of children and youth of the Ministry of Education of Azerbaijan Republiс. During 28-29 March 2023 she was educating 11 pupil about massive stars, methods of studying them and also about the POEMS project.

POEMS members from ASU actively participated in the "86th Annual Conference of the DPG and DPG Spring Meeting", that took place at the Technical University, Dresden, Germany, 20-24 March 2023. The conference topics spread from plasma physics, particle physics, the Earth atmosphere, over solar and extrasolar planets, stellar astrophysics, galaxies, to gravitation, relativity and cosmology.

In total, five contributions from ASU have been presented in the frame of Extraterrestrial Physics and Astrophysics: 2 oral presentations (Dr. Julieta Sanches Arias on "Stellar oscillations in B supergiant stars" and Dr. Dieter Nickeler on "Emulation of density and temperature structures in front of astrospheres: an incompressible approach") and 3 poster presentations (MSc. Suryani Guha on "Characterization of B supergiant variability", MSc. Kuljeet Singh Saddal on "Local HD flows at the Apex of an Astropause", and Dr. Michaela Kraus on "Unveiling the dense molecular environments of evolved massive stars"). The conference has been attended by 2450 participants.

On March 1, 2023, Michaela Kraus has been invited to the Astronomical Institute of the Charles University in Prague to present a seminar talk with title "Unveiling the dense molecular environments of evolved massive stars". The seminar was mostly meant for students, but some senior researchers attended as well. In total, the presentation was attended by 30 persons.

In the beginning of February Aynur Abdulkarimova from ShAO participated in 8th International Youth Scientific and Practical Conference "February Readings 2023: The Creative Potential of Youth in Solving Aerospace Problems", that took place at the National Aviation Academy, Baku, Azerbaijan. Aynur presented her study titled “Discovery of a New [WR] Star” and informed participants of the conference about the POEMS project by sharing our flayers. The conference has been attended by 150 participants from 6 countries. More details can be found on the News page of the National Aviation Academy.

On December 9, 2022, our colleague from Shamakhi Astrophysical Observatory named after Nasireddin Tusi of ANAS, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rustamov Janmammad, defended his thesis on "Spectral and photometric properties of massive dense binary systems at different stages of evolution" in order to receive a Doctor of Science degree in astronomy. The POEMS team congratulates Prof. Janmammad for his success and wishes him all the best for his future career.

On November 8, 2022, Michaela Kraus has been invited to present a seminar talk about the POEMS project at Observatorio Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (online). The talk has been life-streamed, and a recorded version is available in YouTube

POEMS team members from ShAO and ASU participated at the International Conference Alive Universe - from Planets to Galaxies which was organized by ShAO and held online 12-14 October 2022.

Michaela Kraus (ASU) presented an invited talk "Unveiling the Environments of Extreme Massive Stars". Contributed talks have been presented by Aynur Abdulkarimova from ShAO ("The galaсtic distribution of Wolf-Rayet stars"), Julieta P. Sanchez Arias from ASU ("Light curves and frequency analysis of hybrids δ Sct-γ Dor stars"), Sabina Mammadova from ShAO ("About the one feature of photometry behaviour of UX Ori type star WW Vul"), and results based on POEMS data have been presented by Kateřina Pivoňková from the Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic ("Spectral variability of supergiant HD 21389").

On October 12, 2022, Lydia Cidale and Matías Ruíz Díaz from UNLP, both currently visiting ASU, have been invited by the Ambassador of Argentina for the Czech Republic. During their meeting, they discussed about Astronomy in Argentina, joint Argentinian-Czech research projects, highliting the usefulness and necessity of collaboration projects such as POEMS.

During the simultaneous visits of 5 POEMS team members from south America (Catalina Arcos and Natalia Machuca from UV, Lorena Mercanti, Lydia Cidale, and Matías Ruíz Díaz from UNLP) at ASU, the ASU team organized a working workshop in the city of Turnov for sharing knowledge and to discuss strategies for our joint collaboration projects.

The workshop spread over four working days filled with presentations and demonstrations. A total of 15 people participated including senior researchers, researchers, post-docs, PhD- and Master-students.

During the weekend the team visited the beautiful city of Turnov and went for a team-building hiking trip to the Czech Paradise (Cesky Raj).

Many of our South-American POEMS team members participated at the Workshop 64ª Reunión Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Astronomía, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the period 19-23 Sep 2022. An invited review on "Line-driven winds of Massive Stars" has been presented by Michel Curé from UV.

Further contributions were:

• New multiwavelength determinations of mass-loss rates on B supergiants, Venero R.O.J., Arias M.L., Cidale L.S., Mercanti L.V., Torres A. F., Curé


• Estudio de la emisión molecular en el medio circunestelar de BI Cru, Vallverdú, R., Paula Marchiano, P., Arias, M.L., Torres, A.


• Espectrofotometría BCD de estrellas masivas en fases de transición, Aidelman, Y.J., Borges Fernandes, M., Cidale, L.S., Smith Castelli, A., Arias, M.L., Zorec, J., Kraus, M., Torres, A., Souza, T.B., Cochetti, Y.R


• Investigating the nature and the circumstellar environment of a sample of Galactic stars with the B[e] phenomenon, Torres, A.F., Arias M.L., Kraus, M., Cidale, L.S., Maryeva, O., Eenmäe, T., Mercanti, L.V.


• Simulations and Temporal Analysis of Light Curves of Pulsating Binary Stars, Alberici Adam, A., Avila Marín, G.F., Christen, A. and Cidale, L.
  
  

The conference was attended by about 200 scientists.

Heleri Ramler from Tartu Observatory, University of Tartu, attended the Europlanet Science Congress 2022 which took place 18-23 September 2022 in Granada, Spain. She presented a talk on "Observational Facilities and Stellar Characterization Capabilities at Tartu Observatory". The congress was attended by 1180 participants.

POEMS team members from ShAO Aynur Abdulkarimova and Sabina Mammadova from ShAO participated at the International Conference XXII Gamow International Conference: Astronomy and beyond: Cosmology and Gravitation, Astroparticle Physics, Radioastronomy and Astrobiology which took place online 22-26 August 2022 in Odesa, Ukraine.

Aynur Abdulkarimova presented a talk "Discovery of a new [WR] star J040901", and Sabina Mammadove presented a talk "Spectral observations of the Herbig Be star HD 53367". The online conference was attended by more than 100 researchers and gave them possibility to exchange their experiences and results in various fields of astrophysics.

Dieter Nickeler from ASU has been invited by UNLP to contribute with a lecture with title "Topological fluid dynamics view of astrospheres: stellar winds and their magnetospheres on large and small scales" to the postgraduate course "Vientos Estelares y Transporte de Radiación en Medios en Movimiento (Stellar winds and radiative transfer in moving media)" offered by Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas, National University of La Plata, Argentina. The lecture was given online on August 18, 2022

Lydia Cidale from UNLP was invited speaker during the "Women in Science" activity of CONICET on August 9, 2022.

The video of her talk is also availble.

Three POEMS team members attended the XXXI General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union which took place 2-11 August 2022 in Busan, Republic of Korea and which attracted more that 1800 Astronomers world-wide.

Within the frame of the IAU Symposium 370 "Winds of Stars and Exoplanets", one of the seven organized symposia during the General Assembly, Catalina Arcos from UV presented a talk on "Hydrodynamic disk solutions for Be stars using HDUST", and Ignacio Araya from UMAYOR presented a talk on "ISOSCELES: Grid of stellar atmosphere and hydrodynamic models of massive stars. The first results."

Several people from the POEMS team participated at the international TASC6/KASC13 Workshop Asteroseismology in the Era of Surveys from Space and the Ground: Stars, Planets, and the Milky Way. After many postponements, the conference was finally organized at Leuven, Belgium, in the period 11-15 July 2022 with a total of 300 scientific participants. Our team members attended either in-person, such as Julieta Sanchez-Arias and Suryani Guha from ASU, who presented posters on their work and most recent results.

Others participated online, such as Catalina Arcos (from UV), Matias Ruiz-Diaz (from UNLP) and Michaela Kraus (from ASU). Aldana Alberici Adam (from UNLP) participated also online, but prepsented an e-poster. The field of Asteroseismology plays a crucial role for the objectives of POEMS, so this conference allowed to interact with many experts in the field.

The POEMS project already had successful defenses of PhD and Master theses by Dr. Alex Gormaz Matamala, Mgr Aldana Alberici Adam and Mgr. Martín Solar. Now to the treasury of the project also the first bachelor thesis was added. Kateřina Pivoňková - a student of Masaryk University in Brno - successfully defended her work on the 1st of July. Her thesis with title "Spectral variability of evolved supergiants: study of HD 21389" is based on spectral data collected at ASU with the Perek 2-m telescope and with 1.5-m telescope of Tartu University. We congratulate Kateřina and wish her good luck in her future studies and new interesting discoveries in astronomy!

Figure (right): HD21389 and the surrounding nebulosity at infrared wavelengths (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA)

Many of our South-American POEMS team members participated at the Workshop IV Jornada de Astrofísica Estelar (IV Conference on Stellar Astrophysics) held in Tucumán, Argentina, in the period 22-24 June 2022. The conference had a total of 93 scientific participants. Presentations have been given by Yanina Cochetti and Yael Aidelman from UNLP, Ignacio Araya (left photo) from UMAYOR, and Michel Curé from UV.

Furthermore, posters have been presented by Catalina Arcos from UV and by Matias Ruíz Díaz, Roberto Venero, Yael Aidelman, and Aldana Alberici Adam from UNLP.

Two POEMS team members attended the workshop NOT - a telescope for the future which took place 7-10 June 2022 in La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain.

During this workshop, Tiina Liimets from ASU presented an invited talk with title "Stellar outflows with the NOT", and Anni Kasikov from UTARTU presented a talk with title "Following V509 Cas into the void with FIES".

On May 20-21 the Astronomical Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, in Ondřejov has opened their doors again for the public. Many visitors came to see our 2m-telescope, to learn about POEMS and about our work in general, and to enjoy the many offered activities.

Several people from the POEMS team participated at the international IAU Symposium 361: Massive Stars Near and Far.After many postponements, the conference was finally organized as an in-person event in Ballyconnell, Ireland, in the period 8-13 May 2022.

Olga Maryeva (left) and Julieta Sanchez (middle) from the Astronomical Institute Ondřejov presented a poster each on their most recent scientific results.

Rene Oudmaijer (left) from the University of Leeds presented a talk on "Multiple mass loss events on timescales of hundreds of years of the post-Red Supergiant the Fried Egg" and Laurent Mahy from the Royal Observatory of Belgium presented a talk on "The multiplicity of Galactic Luminous Blue Variables". Other POEMS participants were Ignacio Araya from Universidad Mayor, our new Partner institude in Santiago, Chile, and Alex Gormaz Matamala, a POEMS member formerly affiliated with the Universidad de Valparaíso.

The poster of Ignacio (left) presents a new grid of synthetic data, one of our milestones in POEMS, and first applications. The Conference photo with all participants is shown on the right. During that conference people not only exchanged about science. Also Covid had a lively exchange with more than 40 participants, including some POEMS team members. But they luckily all recovered.

The POEMS team member Michaela Kraus from the Astronomical Institute Ondřejov was awarded the LELOIR prize 2021 from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Technología e Innovación of Argentina, for her significant contribution to promoting and consolidating cooperation in science, technology and innovation in Argentina.

The ceremony took place via Zoom on April 19, 2022, and Michaela received the LELOIR Medal and Diploma from the Ambassador of Argentina in the Czech Republic, Roberto Salafia, on May 3rd at the Residence of Argentina in Prague.

On 1 May 2022, Universidad Mayor in Santiago, Chile, joined POEMS. We welcome our new partner institute and look forward to a fruitful collaboration, in particular with our colleague Dr. Ignacio Araya.