NEWS at MPA

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Mixing in the radiative zones of stars is one of the least well understoodcomponents of stellar evolution, and yet can, in many instances, play acrucial role. In recent years, however, much progress has been made inquantifying mixing by a variety of hydrodynamic instabilities, thanks tonumerical experiments that have strongly benefited from advances insupercomputing. I will review the state of the field, and presentperspectives on what can and should be done next by the stellar evolutioncommunity, and by the astrophysical fluid dynamics community. [more]

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ALMA has been producing stunning images and results for stars acrossthe mass and evolutionary ranges. In this talk, I will focus on someresults for Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars (AGB), Planetary Nebulae, RedSupergiants (RSG) and Supernovae. An area of particular interest is theshaping process by which AGB stars evolve to form often highly axisymmetricPlanetary Nebulae - what are the roles of binarity and magnetic fields? Aswell as the mechanisms by which some of the stars are losing large amountsof mass (10-7 to 10-4 Msun/yr) to the interstellar medium. Finally I willdiscuss how ALMA long baseline and high frequency data are starting tohelp answer some of the long-standing questions in stellar evolution. [more]

Cosmological Weak LensingWeak gravitational lensing is a unique technique to map the distribution of dark matter in the universe. It is also a sensitive probe of large scale structures in the universe and cosmological parameters. I will first briefly describe the principles of weak lensing. I will then review the current observational status of this field, highlighting several new measurements especially from the ongoing Dark Energy Survey (DES). I will then discuss the status of tensions between cosmological probes and results for a new integrated approach to combine them. [more]

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