Wednesday Colloquium



14.01.2026

"Fresh stellar abundances of Os, Ir, and Pt, and their implications for stellar nucleosynthesis"

Arthur Puls (CAMK, Warsaw)

Heavier elements (atomic number larger than ~30) are produced in stellar nucleosynthesis by neutron-capture, which is known to happen either by the r- (rapid) process and the s- (slow) process. In the context of Galactic Chemical Evolution, the elements in the third r-process peak (Os, Ir, Pt) are among the least studied species of the periodic table. This is due to observational challenges: the lines of these elements featuring in stellar spectra are weak, in crowded wavelengths, and appear in cool (FGK-type) stars, in which those (blue, near-UV) wavelengths have relatively low flux. In this talk, I will present the results of the first study focusing on a homogeneous set of stellar abundances for the third r-process peak, which more than doubled the availability of Os, Ir, Pt stellar abundances from high resolution spectra in the literature. The implications of the results for our understanding of the nature of the r-process, both in terms of physics and astrophysical sites, will also be discussed.


21.01.2026

""

winter break


28.01.2026

""

winter break


04.02.2026

""

CAMK Annual Meeting


25.02.2026

"TBA"

Arpita Misra (Jagiellonian University, Cracow)


15.04.2026

"tba"

Dominika Król (Harvard Smithonian CfA)