Radek Poleski (OAUW)
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a flagship NASA mission with a 2.5 m primary mirror. Roman has only a single primary instrument: an infrared camera with a field of view of 0.28 deg^2, i.e., 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope. Hence, Roman is perfectly suited to conduct large-scale surveys. There are three main surveys planned: weak lensing, supernovae, and microlensing exoplanets. I will present the current status and future plans of the mission. I'll also show how Roman planning was influenced by the results of the OGLE project.
Christian Ikechukwu Eze (CAMK PAN)
Massive-star evolution remains subject to uncertainties associated with convective core properties, internal mixing, rotation and angular momentum transport. Addressing these uncertainties requires observational constraints on both the fundamental stellar parameters and internal structure. Asteroseismology provides information about stellar interiors through the analysis of pulsation frequencies, while eclipsing binaries allow independent and precise determinations of stellar masses and radii. Combining these approaches offers a means of testing the physical prescriptions adopted in stellar evolutionary models. β Cephei stars are particularly suitable for such investigations because their pressure and gravity modes provide complementary sensitivity to the stellar interior. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) provides high-precision, time-series photometry that enables the detection and characterisation of pulsations in eclipsing binary systems. Together with ground-based spectroscopy and multicolour photometry, these observations provide the constraints needed for detailed binary-star characterisation and asteroseismic modelling. In this colloquium, I will present investigations of β Cephei pulsators in eclipsing binaries using TESS photometry and complementary ground-based observations. I will discuss their physical characterisation and how forward asteroseismic modelling, employing MESA, GYRE, and StORM, has provided quantitative constraints on their internal properties. Particular attention will be given to convective core properties, internal mixing, rotation, and the evolutionary mass discrepancy. I will also discuss the limitations of the available observational constraints and the implications of the results for massive-star evolutionary models.
Leatitia Gibaud (University of Białystok)
Mikołaj Korzyński (CFT PAN)
Sebastian Trojanowski (Astrocent)
On October 6, 2026, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Francis Halzen "for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin". A particle theorist by training, Halzen has often remarked that he ended up leading a massive experimental collaboration at the South Pole "by accident", making this prize a tribute to the synergy between theory and experiment. Because TeV-PeV neutrinos are born in high-energy proton collisions and travel through dense matter without being absorbed or deflected, they allow us to pinpoint the cosmic accelerators where protons reach extreme energies. In this talk, I will discuss how a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice was turned into a giant particle detector, and how IceCube simultaneously probes the environments around supermassive black holes and particle interactions at energies beyond terrestrial colliders.
Dorottya Szesci (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń)
The metal-poor, irregular dwarf galaxy called I Zwicky 18 has been suggested to harbor (theorized) progenitors of Gravitational-Wave emitting mergers. The galaxy emits an unprecedented amount of hard ionizing radiation together with certain emission features in its spectrum. To explain this, a theorist like me has to put together a complex hypothesis based on reliable computer models of those stars, and compare its predictions to all available observations in the literature. Sounds easy, right? But what if she finds that the observations *themselves* actually contradict each other? Then she has no choice but go down the rabbit hole of learning how observational astronomers work, speak, and think – a scientific challenge in itself. In this talk, I share my curious story of the past 12 years tackling the case of I Zwicky 18, and my hunt for finding observational evidence for the existence of a certain type of GW progenitors, which have just come to an end. (Relevant paper: A&A 703 A131)
Parikshit Biswas (CAMK, Warsaw)
