Starry Greetings From Greece

The peak of Mt Olympus, Mystikas. Image by Konstantinos Vasilakakos; not sure if I’ll make it there myself—finding myself on a steep, slippery hill on a recent hike in the Bavarian Alps made me think gazing at mountains from the ground is nice too…

Today, I’m checking in from Greece, near Mt. Olympus, where a conference on Star Formation in the era of J. W. Space Telescope kicked off on Monday. The week-long conference includes talks on topics such as:

• Star formation in extreme environments (e.g. Active Galactic Nuclei—extremely luminous galactic centres with an active supermassive black hole).

• Massive star formation and feedback in molecular clouds.
  Most stars form in dense regions within interstellar molecular clouds—massive cosmic “clouds” composed mostly of molecular hydrogen, along with traces of other elements and compounds.
  The young stars inject energy and momentum into the interstellar medium (this is called feedback), shaping its structure and dynamics.

• Formation and evolution of galactic discs.
  A galactic disc is a component of galaxies with a flattened circular volume of stars (spiral galaxies are characterized by a disc, for example).

These topics cover a much larger cosmic scale than my own work on protoplanetary discs (which I also present in the form of a poster), so I’m here to learn about the big picture. Here are some photos and impressions from the first few days in Paralia Katerini 🏖✨

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