Save the Date! We are pleased to announce that the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) will host a workshop on transients and time-domain astronomy titled "Transients From Space" (TFS) on March 11-13, 2025 at STScI in Baltimore, MD.

Transient science is entering an exciting new era of discovery. The 2020 Decadal Survey named Time Domain Astronomy (TDA) as a top priority, and NASA's Physics of the Cosmos (PCOS) program has prioritized Time Domain And Multi-Messenger (TDAMM) astrophysics. New discoveries will be greatly impacted by space-based telescopes, including, but not limited to, HST, JWST, Swift, Fermi, TESS, Euclid, UVEX, ULTRASAT, LISA, and Roman. These telescopes probe new phase space in time, wavelength, and redshift, thereby opening up new sub-fields. This STScI workshop will explore novel research made possible by these telescopes and discuss how the community can optimize scientific output in the future. It will feature invited talks, contributed talks, posters, discussion panels, and fun social activities.

Our key objectives aim to:

• Highlight and build off successful science driven by space telescope data and policies;
• Uncover regions of overlap among telescopes and discuss opportunities for cross-mission synergies;
• Identify community needs for research and collaboration, particularly in the upcoming era of big data;
• Optimize future space-based observations for the entire community.

• Early-Time Observations: SNe Ia, Fast Transients, Shock Breakout
• High-Energy Transients: GRBs, GW
• Progenitors: pre-explosion variability, stellar evolution
• Infrared Transients: dust, SNRs, echoes, TDEs, AGN
• High-z Transients: Lensed SNe, extreme explosions (SLSNe, PISNe), TDEs, AGN
• Survey Science: Euclid, Roman, UVEX, Big Data
• Theory of explosive transients and compact objects

Co-Chairs

Ori Fox (STScI), Armin Rest (STScI), Suvi Gezari (STScI), Lou Strolger (STScI)

SOC Members

Jennifer Andrews (Gemini Observatory), Ori Fox (STScI; Chair), Suvi Gezari (STScI; Co-Chair), Isobel Hook (Lancaster University), Rebekah Hounsell (GSFC), Patrick Kelly (University of Minnesota), Takashi Moriya (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan), Robert Quimby (San Diego State University), Armin Rest (STScI; Co-Chair), Lou Strolger (STScI; Co-Chair), Tea Temim (Princeton), Yossef Zenati (JHU/STScI)

LOC Members

Ori Fox, Suvi Gezari, Sherita Hanna, Victory Ramnarine, Armin Rest, Shemiah Smith, Lou Strolger Confirmed Invited Speakers

Federica Bianco (Delaware/Rubin), Azalee Bostroem (Arizona), Maria Teresa Botticella (INAF), Brad Cenko (Goddard), Wenlei Chen (OK State), Kishalay De (Columbia University/CCA/Flatiron Institute), Maria Drout (Toronto), Saurabh Jha (Rutgers), Josefin Larsson (KTH), Julie McEnery (Goddard), Brian Metzger (Columbia University/CCA/Flatiron Institute), Jeremy Perkins (Goddard), Justin Pierel (STScI), Ben Rose (Baylor), Melissa Shahbandeh (STScI), Nao Suzuki (LBL), Qinan Wang (MIT), Yuhan Yao (Berkeley)

Please visit our webpage for details, including upcoming deadlines.

When the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was launched on November 20, 2004, its prime objective was to chase Gamma-Ray Bursts. Since then, the mission has far exceeded its original scientific goals. Swift discovered the first afterglows and host galaxies of short-hard GRBs, and a growing sample of events from the local Universe to the epoch of reionization, providing arcsecond positions, light curves, and spectra for more than 1,500 events.

Over time, Swift has become an unequalled Target of Opportunity machine for the astronomical community, thanks to a unique combination of sensitive instrumentation and operational flexibility that provides unprecedented observational capabilities: rapid response coupled with multi-wavelength monitoring of any class of transient/variable object.

After almost 20 years of operations, we think it a fitting occasion to revisit Swift's achievements and to put our mission in the context of the rapidly evolving fields of time-domain and multi-messenger astrophysics. Therefore, we are organizing the meeting "Celebrating 20 years of Swift Discoveries", to be held on March 24-28, 2025, in Florence, Italy, at the Firenze Fiera conference center.

Please mark your calendar to save the date!

Please visit our webpage for details, including upcoming deadlines.

On December 10, 1999, XMM was launched into orbit on an Ariane 5 rocket, beginning its 25 year journey for X-ray astronomy.

Jointly with our ESA partners, we will be holding a 3-day virtual data analysis workshop on April 1-3 2025. Later in late May/early June we will be holding an XMM 25th Anniversary conference in the Washington D.C. metro area. This is planned for three days and will be a similar but expanded version of our 20th Anniversary symposium at GSFC in 2019.

Details for registration for both will be announced soon.

Please mark your calendar to save the date!

A conference in honour of Enrico Cappellaro, Massimo Della Valle, Laura Greggio, Massimo Turatto

We are delighted to announce the conference: "An extraordinary journey into the Transient Sky: from restless progenitor stars to explosive multi-messenger signals. A conference in honour of Enrico Cappellaro, Massimo Della Valle, Laura Greggio and Massimo Turatto", which will be held from 1st to 4th April 2025, in Padua (Italy).

Supernovae play a key role in various issues in modern astronomy and cosmology. Current surveys have given an enormous boost to the study of transients and supernovae in particular, and it is essential to discuss the state-of-the-art before entering a golden age of the study of the transient Universe. Thanks to the synoptic surveys that will monitor every night the entire visible sky, from optical to radio, and the new-generation instrumentation that will make it possible to observe all the messengers associated with supernova explosions, from photons to neutrinos, from high-energy particles to gravitational waves, it will finally be possible to have both a statistically significant sample of events and a very detailed overview of individual events.

The study of supernovae in the Italian scientific community began in the 1960s with the work of Leonida Rosino and Roberto Barbon and subsequently received a great impulse thanks to Enrico Cappellaro, Massimo Della Valle, Laura Greggio and Massimo Turatto, who studied in Padua in the same years. With this international conference, we intend to celebrate their retirement by recalling their important contribution to the study of supernovae and discussing the still open challenges that we are ready to take up.

Reviewing the trajectory of our honorees, we will touch on topics such as the progenitors of supernovae, the search for supernovae and their rates, the supernova class zoo, supernovae in connection with gamma-ray bursts, and supernova observations in the age of multi-messenger Astronomy.

For additional questions, please see the conference website.

The unparalleled near-infrared capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) allow us to study distant galaxies in remarkable detail. This has ushered in a new era of galaxy evolution studies. With new knowledge of the properties of the stars, gas and dust that make up these early galaxies, we can now start to gain insights into the physical processes driving the assembly of the earliest galaxies, and how they evolve into their lower redshift descendants.

This conference will be an opportunity to highlight recent observational and theoretical results shedding new light on the detailed properties of the stellar populations and interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies through the early phases of cosmic history. It will also serve as a forum for discussing how new JWST results are transforming our understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies from early times through to the present day.

Scientific Focus:

• Nature of stellar populations in distant galaxies
• Properties of the interstellar medium across redshifts
• Chemical enrichment and build-up of dust across cosmic time
• Spatially resolved studies of galaxies and their environments
• Impact of galaxies on cosmic reionization
• How can simulations and theory help interpret the latest observations
• Feedback and regulating galaxy growth

Rebecca Bowler (Manchester); Andy Bunker (Oxford, co-chair); Alex Cameron (Oxford, co-chair); Emma Curtis-Lake (Hertfordshire); Richard Ellis (UCL); Laura Pentericci (INAF-Rome); Aayush Saxena (Oxford, co-chair); Stephen Wilkins (Sussex)

LOC:

Kit Boyett; Andy Bunker; Alex Cameron; Leanne O'Donnell; Gareth Jones; Aayush Saxena

For additional questions, please see the conference website.

A series of extreme-variability phenomena associated with supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galactic nuclei are being revealed with increasing frequency in recent years thanks to enhanced survey capabilities across the electromagnetic spectrum. The observation of these extreme phenomena has opened the way to the study of the physics of SMBHs in real time - something that, until a decade ago, was exclusively associated with stellar-mass black holes. As the baseline of follow-up observations extends, repeating events have gathered more and more observational evidence in the recent past.

Understanding the diverse phenomena presented by multi-wavelength observations - a non-exhaustive list of which is given below - is challenging and competing interpretations are being actively debated. With this workshop, we aim at providing an environment where observers and theorists can gather together to investigate whether a detailed look at individual sources, and the broader characteristics of source samples, can reveal common threads which will enable us to advance our understanding of the dynamic and complex environments which exist in galactic nuclei.

Topics:

• Full and partial Tidal Disruption Events
• Multi-wavelength emission and outflows in nuclear transients
• X-ray Quasi-Periodic Eruptions in galactic nuclei
• Quasi-Periodic Oscillations from supermassive black holes
• Changing-look and changing-state Active Galactic Nuclei
• Supermassive black hole binaries, Extreme Mass-Ratio Inspirals, Gravitational Waves
• Theory and numerical simulations

LOC: Lucia Ballo, Ignacio de la Calle, Jacobo Ebrero, Margherita Giustini (co-chair), Aitor Ibarra Ibaibarriaga, Jose López Miralles, Erwan Quintin (co-chair), Juan Pablo Vega González

Further information: The workshop is intended to be in-person to ease productive discussion and will lead to the publication of conference proceedings.

For additional questions, please see the workshop website.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, planned to launch in late 2026, will be capable of surveying the sky 1000 times faster than the Hubble Space Telescope with similar sensitivity and resolution. A combination of near-infrared imaging and spectroscopic surveys, designed by Roman's community-defined Core Community Surveys and General Astrophysics Survey programs, will generate unique data-sets and large-area maps of the sky that will catalyze scientific discovery across all of astrophysics. Roman's accurate mapping of stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters will offer the unique ability to map our Universe, both the seen and the unseen.

This conference aims to focus on the intersection of galaxy formation and evolution with dark matter and dark energy. It will explore the novel research that is possible only with large cosmic surveys and simulations and discuss how the community will be able to optimize scientific output with Roman in the future. Topics of discussion will include, but are not limited to, the expected impacts from Roman observations of galaxy clustering, baryon acoustic oscillations, weak lensing, galaxy clusters, supernova cosmology, stellar streams, and dwarf galaxies. The conference will also strive to foster synergies between contemporaneous experiments to Roman, such as Euclid, Rubin's LSST, DESI, and Simons Observatory. The schedule will feature invited talks, contributed talks, posters, discussion panels, and fun social activities.

Attendance: The workshop will be a hybrid event (in-person and virtual). To maximize engagement, in-person attendance is encouraged for all participants, especially speakers.

SOC

Ami Choi (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Co-Chair), Javier Sanchez (STScI; Co-Chair), Alexandra Amon (Princeton University), Ori Fox (STScI), Konrad Kuijken (Leiden University), Patricia Larsen (Argonne National Laboratory), Lado Samushia (Kansas State University), Yun Wang (Caltech/IPAC), Yuanyuan Zhang (NOIRLab)

LOC

Leslie Beauchamp (STScI), Annalisa Calamida (STScI), Samantha Hoffmann (STScI), Max Mutchler (STScI), Cristina Oliveira (STScI), Melissa Shahbandeh (STScI), Shemiah Smith (STScI)

Further information:

The workshop is intended to be in-person to ease productive discussion and will lead to the publication of conference proceedings.

For additional questions, please see the workshop website.

The International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation is organised every three years under the guidance of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation. It is the principal international meeting for scientists working in all areas of relativity and gravitation.

The Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves is organised every two years under the guidance of the Gravitational Wave International Committee. It is the principal international meeting for scientists working in all areas of gravitational-wave science.

In 2025, the 24th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR24) and the 16th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves (Amaldi16) will be held together as a joint meeting, bringing together experts from across classical and quantum gravity, mathematical and applied relativity, gravitational-wave instrumentation and data-analysis, and multimessenger astronomy.

The GR24-Amaldi Meeting will be held as a primarily in-person event at the Scottish Event Campus, Glasgow. Online resources will be made freely available after the event. Meeting organisation is led by the Institute for Gravitational Research at the University of Glasgow and the Institute of Physics.

For additional questions, please see the conference website.

We are pleased to announce the inaugural open community conference for NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory, to be held at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, DC, from July 28-31, 2025. This milestone event will bring together scientists, engineers, industry and community stakeholders to propel the development of HWO, a mission expected to usher in a new era of astrophysics discovery and address one of humanity's oldest questions "Are we alone?"

The Habitable Worlds Observatory is NASA Astrophysics' next flagship mission, and builds on the heritage of the Hubble, Webb, and Roman Space Telescopes. It will deploy advanced ultraviolet, optical, and infrared technologies to identify potentially habitable worlds and analyze their atmospheres for signs of life. This same technology will empower astronomers to address fundamental, persistent questions in cosmology, galaxy evolution, the origins of elements, and our Solar System's place in the universe.

HWO has made significant progress in the past year, with NASA establishing a dedicated Technology Maturation Project Office at Goddard Space Flight Center, working in close collaboration with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ames Research Center, and Marshall Space Flight Center. This initiative advances critical technologies and science cases, and fosters collaboration across government, academia, and industry. Results of HWO working groups will be showcased together with contributions from the international research community. The conference proceedings will form a first HWO community science book.

Join us at HWO25 to learn more, share your insights, and help shape the future of this transformative mission. Additional details about registration and abstract submissions will follow in early 2025. Keep apprised of updates through our HWO mailing list, save the date, and be part of this exciting journey!

For additional information, please sign up here to receive up-to-date details conference website.

The decisive role of massive black holes in galaxy evolution is implied through scaling relations with galaxy properties and observations of ubiquitous nuclear outflows across a wide redshift range. In simulations, accretion onto black holes is a key ingredient in matching observed galaxy mass functions. Recently, the surprisingly high abundance of AGN at z>4 revealed through JWST observations has sparked renewed interest in massive black hole seeding and growth during the first billion years from both observational and theoretical sides.

The conference aims at bringing together researchers studying massive black holes across and beyond the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as theorists and simulators to discuss recent advances in the research of massive black hole growth, evolution, demographics, and impact across cosmic time.

We will focus on the following key themes:

• Observational indicators of massive black holes across cosmic time
• Observational constraints on black hole masses through a variety of techniques and across wavelengths (including stellar dynamics, reverberation mapping, single-epoch virial relations, scaling relations, and gravitational waves)
• Black hole demographics as a function of redshift through simulationsConstraints on massive black hole formation (including seeding models) and growth pathways through theory, and in combination with observations
• Impact of black holes on galaxy evolution evidenced through feedback and scaling relations in observations and simulations

Xiaohui Fan (University of Arizona); Jenny Greene (Princeton University); Sophie Koudmani (Herts/KICC); Roberto Maiolino (KICC, co-chair); Chris Moore (KICC/IoA/DAMPT); Priyamvada Natarajan (Yale University); Debora Sijacki (KICC); Hannah &Ueml;bler (MPE, co-chair)

Local Organising Committee:

Sophie Koudmani(Co-chair); Jan Scholtz(Co-chair); Leah Bigwood; Steve Brereton(admin); Stephanie Buttigieg; Sophia Geris; Lucy Ivey; Xihan Ji; Ignas Juodžbalis; Roberto Maiolino; Eun-jin Shin; Debora Sijacki; Alison Wilson (admin)

For additional questions, please see the conference website.

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are among the most dynamic and powerful sources in the universe, powered by supermassive black holes (SMBHs) through mass accretion. The accretion rate influences many AGN properties, with high accretion rates playing a key role in growing black holes and launching outflows that may shape the host galaxy's growth. Highly accreting AGN, particularly at low redshift, offer a benchmark to understand the rapid growth of the first SMBHs in the early Universe, which remains a mystery to be solved.

Significant theoretical and observational advancements have been made in understanding fast-accreting systems, thanks to long-running observatories like VLT, ALMA, JVLA, Chandra, XMM, HST, and NuSTAR, as well as the recently launched JWST, Euclid, and IXPE. With the first light of the ELT on the horizon and the recent results from JWST on the growth of SMBH at high redshift, now is the ideal time to convene and share insights on highly accreting SMBHs. The workshop will gather astronomers to summarize the field's current status, bridging the accretion history from the early to the local Universe, and explore the mechanisms driving their growth and impact on the Universe.

This workshop will focus on the following key themes:

• NLS1s and other low-z highly accreting AGN and their cosmological implications;
• Outflows, jets, feedback in highly accreting sources from the nearby Universe to cosmic dawn;
• Surrounding environment and host galaxy properties of highly accreting AGN at all epochs;
• Theoretical and observational advances in the nuclear properties of extreme accreting AGN from low-z to high-z;
• Changing-look, tidal disruption event and their implication in changing the accretion state of AGN;
• Recent progress in the study of QSOs at high-z and AGN evolution;
• Recent observations with state-of-the-art facilities (JWST, ALMA, XMM-Newton), future observations with new facilities (Vera Rubin, Athena, ELT, SKA, 4MOST, AXIS, PRIMA), theoretical modeling and AI.

For additional questions, please email to agn2025_loc[AT]eso[DOT]org or check out the conference website.