Volume 328 (2011) of the Journal of Physics: Conference Series provides a record of the invited and contributed talks, and of the posters presented at the GREAT-ESF workshop entitled `Stellar Atmospheres in the Gaia Era: Quantitative Spectroscopy and Comparative Spectrum Modelling'
(http://great-esf.oma.be and mirrored at http://spectri.freeshell.org/great-esf). The conference was held on 23–24 June 2011 at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. 47 scientists from 11 countries around the world attended the workshop.
The ESA–Gaia satellite (launch mid 2013) will observe a billion stellar objects in the Galaxy and provide spectrophotometric and high-resolution spectra of an unprecedented number of stars observed with a space-based instrument. The confrontation of these data with theoretical models will significantly advance our understanding of the physics of stellar atmospheres. New stellar populations such as previously unknown emission line stars will be discovered, and fundamental questions such as the basic scenarios of stellar evolution will be addressed with Gaia data.
The 33 presentations and 4 main discussion sessions at the workshop addressed important topics in spectrum synthesis methods and detailed line profile calculations urgently needed for accurate modelling of stellar spectra. It brought together leading scientists and students of the stellar physics communities investigating hot and cool star spectra. The scientific programme of the workshop consisted of 23 oral (6 invited) and 10 poster presentations about cool stars (first day; Comparative Spectrum Modelling and Quantitative Spectroscopy of Cool Stars), and hot stars (second day; Quantitative Spectroscopy of Hot Stars). The hot and cool stars communities use different spectrum modelling codes for determining basic parameters such as the effective temperature, surface gravity, iron abundance, and the chemical composition of stellar atmospheres. The chaired sessions of the first day highlighted new research results with spectral synthesis codes developed for cool stars, while the second day focused on codes applied for modeling the spectra of hot stars.
The workshop addressed five major topics in stellar atmospheres research:
Spectrum synthesis codes
Radiation hydrodynamics codes
Atmospheric parameters, abundance, metallicity, and chemical tagging studies
Large spectroscopic surveys
New atomic database
The workshop presentations discussed various important scientific issues by comparing detailed model spectra to identify differences that can influence and bias the resulting atmospheric parameters. Theoretical line-blanketed model spectra were compared in detail to high-resolution spectroscopic observations. Stellar spectra computed (i.e., in the Gaia Radial Velocity Spectrometer wavelength range) with 1-D model atmosphere structures were mutually compared, but also to 3-D models from advanced radiation hydrodynamics codes. Atmospheric parameters derived from spectrum synthesis calculations assuming Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (LTE) were evaluated against more sophisticated non-LTE models of metal-poor stars and the extended atmospheres of giants and supergiants. The workshop presented an overview of high-resolution synthetic spectral libraries of model spectra computed with the synthesis codes. The spectral model grids will be utilized to derive stellar parameters with the Discrete Source Classifier Algorithms currently under development in the Gaia DPAC consortium
(http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=GAIA&page=DPAC_Introduction).
They are implemented for training Gaia data analysis algorithms for the classification of a wide variety of hot and cool star types; FGK and M stars, OB stars, white dwarfs, red supergiants, peculiar A and B stars, carbon stars, ultra cool dwarfs, various types of emission line stars, Be stars, Wolf–Rayet stars, etc. A substantial number of oral and poster presentations discussed different techniques for measuring the abundance of various chemical elements from stellar spectra. The presented methods utilize spectra observed with large spectral dispersion, for example for accurately measuring iron, carbon, and nitrogen abundances. These methods are important for ongoing development and testing of automated and supervised algorithms for determining detailed chemical composition in tagging studies of large (chemo-dynamical) spectroscopic surveys planned to complement the Gaia (astrometric and kinematic) census of the Galaxy.
The complete scientific programme is available here.
The workshop website also offers the presentation viewgraphs (in PDF format) and some nice photographs of the talks and
poster breaks http://great-esf.oma.be/program.php. The papers presented at the workshop and collected here have
been edited by A Lobel, J-P De Greve, and W van Rensbergen. The Proceedings essentially follow the order of presentation
during the conference program, divided into cool and hot stars (oral papers are followed by poster papers). It also
offers a review paper about new research results presented at the conference, including a record of the main discussion
sessions. 27 papers passed through the peer review process. The manuscripts were submitted before 15 September 2011 and
accepted by the referees before 1 November 2011. We would like to thank the reviewers for their constructive criticism
during the preparation of this Volume. It has 225 pages by 27 authors and 135 co-authors, and includes 114 color figures
and 21 tables. The articles are freely available at http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/328/1.
We would like to express our gratitude for the financial support from the European Science Foundation and the Research Foundation – Flanders. We thank the Vrije Universiteit Brussel for making the meeting and poster rooms freely available during the conference. We specially thank Mrs Merel Fabré for assistance with the workshop organization and administration at the VUB. We thank the Royal Observatory of Belgium for help with conference grants management, transportation, and administration. We are grateful to all the workshop participants for their valuable contributions and active discussions which made the conference very successful indeed.
Alex LobelRoyal Observatory of Belgium, Ringlaan 3, B-1180 Brussels, Belgium
E-mail: Alex.Lobel@oma.be alobel@sdf.lonestar.org
Web: http://alobel.freeshell.orgJean-Pierre De GreveWalter van RensbergenVrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium
Editors
Brussels, October 2011
CONFERENCE POSTER
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Jose Groh (Germany)
Peter Hauschildt (Germany)
Ulrike Heiter (Sweden)
Alex Lobel (Belgium)
Bertrand Plez (France)
Norbert Przybilla (Germany)
Rosanna Sordo (Italy)
CONFERENCE SPONSORS
European Science Foundation (ESF) http://www.esf.org
Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen)http://www.fwo.be
Free University Brussels (VUB) http://www.vub.ac.be
Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) http://www.astro.oma.be
CONFERENCE PHOTOGRAPH (23 June 2011)
CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS
1 | Teresa Aparicio Villegas | Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Granada, Spain |
2 | Maria Bergemann | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching, Germany |
3 | Ronny Blomme | Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels |
4 | Thomas Dall | European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany |
5 | Alex de Koter | University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
6 | Yanping Chen | University of Groningen, The Netherlands |
7 | Andrea Chiavassa | Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium |
8 | Remo Collet | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching, Germany |
9 | Jean-Pierre De Greve | Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium |
10 | Nadiya Gorlova | University of Leuven, Belgium |
11 | Jose Groh | Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy, Bonn, Germany |
12 | Peter Hauschildt | Observatory of Hamburg, Germany |
13 | Artemio Herrero | Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Spain |
14 | Ulrike Heiter | University of Uppsala, Sweden |
15 | Anthony Hervé | University of Liège, Belgium |
16 | Leo Houziaux | Royal Academy of Belgium, Brussels |
17 | Rene Hudec | Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic |
18 | Alain Jorissen | Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium |
19 | Andreas Korn | University of Uppsala, Sweden |
20 | Pavel Koubsky | Astronomical Institute Ondřejov, Czech Republic |
21 | Alex Lobel | Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels |
22 | Ali Luo | National Astronomical Observatory, Beijing, China |
23 | Laurent Mahy | University of Liège, Belgium |
24 | Zazralt Magic | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching, Germany |
25 | Jesús Maldonado | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain |
26 | Thomas Masseron | Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium |
27 | Josephina Montalban | University of Liège, Belgium |
28 | David Montes | Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain |
29 | Thierry Morel | University of Liège, Belgium |
30 | Pieter Neyskens | Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium |
31 | Fernanda Nieva | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching, Germany |
32 | Giancarlo Pace | University of Porto, Portugal |
33 | Elena Pancino | INAF – Observatory of Bologna, Italy |
34 | Bertrand Plez | University of Montpellier, France |
35 | Norbert Przybilla | Observatory of Bamberg, Germany |
36 | Andreas Quirrenbach | Observatory of Heidelberg, Germany |
37 | Alejandra Recio-Blanco | Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, France |
38 | Luca Sbordone | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Heidelberg, Germany |
39 | Sergio Simon Diaz | Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Spain |
40 | Rosanna Sordo | INAF – Observatory of Padova, Italy |
41 | Frans Arjen Stap | University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
42 | Marica Valentini | University of Liège, Belgium |
43 | Griet Van de Steene | Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels |
44 | Sophie Van Eck | Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium |
45 | Walter van Rensbergen | Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium |
46 | Nicholas Walton | University of Cambridge, United Kingdom |
47 | Jiannan Zhang | National Astronomical Observatory, Beijing, China |