The Seventh VVV Science Workshop will be held in Antofagasta between 29 February and 1 March, 2016.
Read about classical Cepheid variables residing in the old inner Milky Way, discovered by the VVV Survey.
In astronomy magazines:
Article in Sky&Telescope.
Article in space.com.
In the news (:
The Washington Post.
Repubblica.it.
Index.hu.
Origo.hu.
We published our new
study
in the framework of the VVV Galactic Cepheid Program, entitled
"The VVV Survey Reveals Classical Cepheids Tracing a Young and Thin Stellar Disk across the Galaxy's Bulge".
Check out the corresponding ESO press release:
"VISTA Discovers New Component of Milky Way".
I visited Eamonn Kerins at the University of Manchester to share ideas about the prospects of VVV data processing with difference image analysis.
I attended the 'Milky Way Astrophysics from Wide-Field Surveys' meeting in the Burlington House of the RAS in London. I gave a talk entitled "The other side of the Milky Way: The VVV Galactic Cepheid Program".
We reported on the
identification of several binary RR Lyrae stars
among the OGLE sample in the Galactic bulge.
Our discovery might pave the way towards a long-desired direct measurement of the
masses of these fundamentally important stellar beacons.
Read the whole story in the
press release
and watch the animated RR Lyrae light-curves showing the
light-travel-time effect.
The first paper of the VVV Galactic Cepheid Program has been published in ApJ:
Discovery of a Pair of Classical Cepheids in an Invisible Cluster Beyond the Galactic Bulge.
There is also a press release at the Space Exploration Network
and a photo release at the
ESO Portal.
25 hours of observing time has been awarded for follow-up spectroscopy of classical Cepheid candidates using X-shooter on VLT, in the framework of the VVV Galactic Cepheid Program (PI: Dekany).
One night of observing time has been awarded in the upcoming semester for our VVV Galactic Cepheid Program, for performing follow-up spectroscopy of distant classical Cepheid candidates using FIRE on the Magellan telescope (PI: Dekany).
We have been awarded 70 hours of observing time for measuring radial velocities of inner bulge RR Lyrae stars in order to measure the rotation of the oldest stellar component of the bulge using VIMOS on VLT. (PI: Zoccali).
The paper that discusses the VVV Galactic Cepheid Program and the discovery of the Twin Cepheids has been submitted to ApJL.
I gave an invited talk at the WFIRS2014 meeting about the VVV Survey, on the Galactic and Local Group Parallel Session. The meeting is mainly about the preparation to the WFIRST mission (although they spared the 'T' in the title to give some room for things that already exist). I did not really force that synergistic language and tried to concentrate on the impact of our latest results on Galactic astronomy, and people liked it. It was also nice to see that so many speakers built their talks around the results from our survey. I'm also looking forward to the few days out in LA, a bit too much work lately.
The first announcement of the MAS Postdoc Symposium (MAS SYPO) is out. Yapo.
I'm about to finish the manuscript of the first paper on the VVV Galactic Cepheid Program. It's the kind of paper I like, concise text, to the point, about something new that nobody could do so far.
Our first paper on the stellar variability of bulge globular clusters in the VVV is finally accepted by AJ. A lot of work before submission, relatively easy refereeing, way to go. Of course, right after acceptation, comes out the OGLE-IV RR Lyrae paper, made us to revise the results again. Result: more oddities uncovered. The horribly steep extinction curve is now consistent towards the two clusters and now it's really scary. But what to do, nature puzzles us once again. And thanks to Andrzej, his prompt replies to our data requests were amazing and very helpful.