In this second part, I will connect basic theory of optical interferometry to recent results, especially from GRAVITY on VLTI. The goal is for the audience to understand how astrophysical results are obtained from complex visibilities, not from equations, but from basic principles.

Bring your Fourier transform and come see why telescopes and interferometers behave exactly the same.

The journey that Astronomers have taken in order to recover a clear picture of the heavens has been a long one. Earth's turbulent atmosphere sets a limit on the scales of detail that can be recovered - an impediment once believed so fundamental it would set a boundary to what humanity could know. Progress in astrophysics throughout the 20th century was largely made in spite of the fact that we mostly failed to solve this problem, rather than because we did. Recovering structures at the highest angular resolutions obtainable at the formal diffraction limit of a modern large ground-based telescope continues to present interesting challenges. With the past as our guide, I discuss new ways to formulate the image formation process.

Low mass stars, stars within the mass range ~0.5-2 Msun, undergo core helium flash at the end of their first red giant branch (RGB) evolutionary phase. The subsequent abrupt change in luminosity leaves a sharp upper luminosity of the RGB, the Tip fo the Red Giant Branch (TRGB) easily identifiable in a Colour-Magnitude Diagram. A well-defined luminosity of the TRGB has been recognised by Baade and Sandage, and established as a useful distance indicator by Da Costa & Armandroff 1990 and Lee et al. 1993. It has been shown to be competitive distance indicator in comparison with Cepheids, surface brightness fluctuations and the planetary nebulae luminosity function.

After a brief theoretical background for the TRGB method, I will give an overview of methods that have been used to identify and measure the brightness of the TRGB and to calibrate its brightness. I will explain why TRGB is typically applied to I-band filter photometric observations and discuss its calibration in other photometric bands. Applications to measuring distances to (nearby) galaxies and for Hubble Constant H0 measurements will be also presented.

Experimental physics relies by definition on hardware to carry experiments, with a growing tendency towards large and complex infrastructures (LHC, ELT, JWST…). Developing and building such infrastructures is alone an engineering challenge that pushes the boundaries of human knowledge. Mechanisms, metal structures, materials and heat transfer - including cryogenics - are some of the technical aspects covered by Mechanical Engineering. This talk introduces this engineering branch, skipping through its main concepts and tools. Examples referring to the ELT and other facilities are also provided.

The study of stellar magnetic fields — particularly for main sequence stars — has advanced enormously in the last couple of decades thanks to the increased availability of high resolution echelle spectrographs and spectropolarimeters. I’ll take you on a very brief tour of our current understanding of stellar magnetic fields, starting with the main techniques that are used to detect them across a range of spectral types. I’ll then outline what these techniques have revealed and how these are affecting our understanding of stellar and planetary formation and evolution.

In the first half of the talk we will go over a brief introduction to deep learning together covering the history, differences with machine learning and its recent advances. Then we will review the general use cases, starting with typical ones like classification, regression and finishing with auto-encoders.

In the second half, we will detail two exemplar data-driven applications in astronomy: a) TransiNet: real-time transient detection using ConvNets, b) "Letting spectra speak for themselves!

A basic introduction is given to optical and IR detectors for ground based astronomical instrumentation. This will include a bottom up description of the techniques employed by the manufacturers to give the very best performance demanded by us.

It will also include a brief description of the external detector electronics required to drive these beasts as well as touching on some of the characterisation testing we do here at ESO. Real devices will be on show.

Artifacts, background noises, mosaic overlaps, HDR looks, color balance, more exposures, frame composition, etc. are all issues which removing/improving them completely might not affect your scientific output but could help significantly to share your science with the world outside. The discussion will look into the visual improvements which could be done on images by scientists as part of post-processing and data reduction. The talk will be also a quick surf on deep waters of scientific image processing for outreach purposes at ESO.

We will discuss simulation outputs from projects such as IllustrisTNG -- what kind of data exists, and how it can be analyzed. I will go quickly through how to use the IllustrisTNG public data release (online), including its documentation, getting started tutorials, and examples for data analysis.

I will lead a short hands-on tutorial showing some basic data analysis. If you wish to follow along (recommended), please bring your laptop. Before Monday, please register for a TNG data release account if you don’t have one already. After this has been approved, please then request access to the JupyterLab service, which I will use for the tutorial. We won’t have time to do any of this on Monday morning. This will be in Python, although it is also possible to work in IDL or Matlab.

We can discuss how to compare the simulations to any type of observation that people may have, and other topics of interest.

Core Collapse Supernovae are the endpoint of the evolution of massive stars (M > 10 Msun). They play a fundamental role in the evolution of the Universe because, among the other things, contribute to the production of most of the elements (especially those necessary to life), induce star formation when the shock wave following the explosion passes though the interstellar medium, produce neutron stars and black holes, are connected to the GRB events (some of them) and last, but not least, are one of the sources of gravitational waves. Therefore, a good knowledge of these events are needed to shed light on many astrophysical topical subjects.

In this lecture I will mainly focus on the role of core collapse supernovae in then chemical evolution of the matter and, in particular, on the nucleosynthesis occurring during the explosion. I will describe the basic principles of the nuclear burning at high temperatures coupled to the dynamics of the exploding mantle of the star and will show the main products of the various explosive burning.

For sake of completeness I will also briefly discuss the chemical composition of the final ejecta, how it depends on the progenitor star and on the remnant mass. Finally, I will show which is the contribution of a generation of massive stars (i.e., core collapse supernovae) to the global enrichment of the interstellar medium.

Supermassive black holes are found inside all massive galaxies. As these black holes grow (through mass accretion) tremendous amounts of energy is released. Current galaxy evolution theory states that this energy must couple to the gas in the host galaxy (and beyond) and consequently heat the gas or driving it away through outflows. Without this so-called “AGN feedback” models cannot reproduce realistic galaxy populations. However, trying to observationally constrain this process has been an on-going challenge for the last two decades. In this KES I will give a simplified overview of the status of the research on AGN feedback, including the different approaches taken by observers and theorists. Most importantly I will try to provide some clarity on what can be considered a very confusing topic to those outside the field!

The ESA cornerstone mission Gaia has been relentlessly scanning the full sky for nearly 5 years in order to create an unprecedented three-dimensional map of the Milky Way based on astrometric, photometric, and spectroscopic observations of more than 1.7 billion stars. The two first Gaia data releases (DR1, DR2) have already significantly impacted many areas of astronomy and astrophysics. Yet, the best is still to come with Gaia's mission lifetime having been extended to 6.5 years, and further extensions being likely. However, 10 months after DR2, several issues related to Gaia data have surfaced and are worth discussing.

This KES lecture aims to provide a digestible teaser of Gaia's enormous potential for stellar astrophysics and cosmology while addressing some lessons learned since DR2. To this end, the lecture is split into three main parts: i) a brief overview of the Gaia mission as the largest-ever homogeneous all-sky multi-instrument time-domain survey, ii) Gaia's variability processing with a focus on classical Cepheids and other pulsating stars, and iii) Gaia's impact on the distance scale and its relevance for resolving the Hubble tension. 

The Tully-Fisher (TF) relation is one of the tightest scaling laws in extra-galactic Astronomy, linking the visible mass of a galaxy to its outer rotation velocity. I will start with a brief historical overview of the TF relation and its application as a distance indicator. I will then focus on the physics behind the TF relation and its implications for dark matter and cosmology. In particular, the small scatter of the TF relation and the lack of residual correlations with galaxy radius lead to a number of non-trivial fine-tuning problems for current models of galaxy formation.

In collaboration with a renowned movie director Hiromitsu Kohsaka, who is specialised on full-dome movies (which you would watch in a full-dome projection of the planetarium), we have created the world’s first full-dome movie on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In this 45-minutes movie, you will learn the history and physics of the CMB in an intuitive manner, with incredible computer graphics and beautiful original music. Actors and actresses are real people, but most of the other stuff are CGs.

While we cannot show this movie yet in the full-dome of ESO Supernova, I will show this on a flat screen. Enjoy! The trailer is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQbZi4wfoaw

I will give a short introduction to galaxy formation simulations, including their overall purpose, motivation, and utility for studying various questions within the context of galaxy formation and evolution. First, I will compare the different types, approaches, and computational methods. I will discuss the common physical ingredients -- which physical processes are typically included in current simulations, 'subgrid' models, and future directions in this front. With reference to Illustris and IllustrisTNG in particular, I will discuss model calibration (tuning), and typical 'caveats' to the use of these types of simulations.

In the second half, we will get practical and discuss the simulation outputs -- what kind of data exists, and how it can be used. I will go quickly through how to use the IllustrisTNG public data release (online), including its documentation, getting started tutorials, and examples for data analysis. We can discuss the creation of synthetic (mock) observations, how to compare the simulations to any type of observation that people may have, and other topics of interest.