The fourth session of the "ORP Science Talks" will take place on September 25 at 11am CEST, featuring Viktoria Pinter and Nada Ihanek. You are welcome to join by clicking here!

ORP Science Talks take place approximately every month on Zoom, providing the community (ORP and hopefully beyond) with the opportunity to present their work and scientific results. ORP members, share feedback on the ORP Science Talks or nominate yourself as a speaker at this virtual meeting with an email to outreach@orp-h2020.eu.

View recordings of the talks from the previous three sessions here, here, and here.

Short descriptions of the next speakers' talks:

Viktoria Pinter (CAHA) 

Deep K-band surface brightness photometry of dE galaxies 

Dwarf elliptical galaxies (dEs) are the most abundant type of galaxy in the Universe. Research into these objects and their connections with late-type dwarf galaxies is important for understanding theories of dwarf galaxy formation and evolution. We analyzed 141 dEs, examining their surface brightness profiles (SBPs) across four environments using near-infrared Ks-band data. For the first time, Ks apparent magnitudes were obtained for 67 galaxies, along with other physical parameters for 91 objects. Correlations between these parameters revealed a separation between dEs in different environments. The fundamental plane(FP) for dEs was constructed and compared with the FP for star-forming dwarf galaxies, suggesting no evolutionary link between the two classes. 

Nada Ihanek (ING/OAUW) 

Study of peculiar, high amplitude nuclear flares

In recent years large all sky surveys have discovered  more and more high amplitude flares from the centres of galaxies, both active and quiescent. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to explain such events, from Tidal Disruption Events, Bowen Fluorescence Flares, Changing Look Quasars or Microlensing Events. Gaia has been observing the whole sky since 2014 and is particularly good at detecting long-term high amplitude  flares. Up until now, Gaia Photometric Science Alerts has discovered more than 25000 transients, around 10% of them being localized in centres of their host galaxies. We have preformed a study on those nuclear transients, focusing on >0.5mag flares and obtained spectroscopic and photometric follow -up. In the talk I plan to present the current status of the project and the most interesting examples of high amplitude flares.