A&G Highlights Meeting - February 2026

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science.

Royal Astronomical Society

The Geological Society

A&amp;G Highlights Meeting ProgrammeFebruary 13th 2026 16:00 Prof Mike Lockwood (President)Welcome and Announcements16:05 Dr Chris Coleman (University of Glasgow)“Astronomical Radiative Transfer and Video Games: a Match Made in the Sun”Radiative transfer is a cornerstone of astrophysics, providing a key tool to model and interpret observations of distant structures, for which in situ measurements are typically impossible. Whilst simplifying approximations are often possible, there are instances where the observed radiation forms in optically thick plasma outside of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) conditions, necessitating detailed and computationally costly treatments of atomic spectral lines across regions connected by a global radiation field.However, astronomy is not the only field that interests itself with the solution of the radiative transfer equation and the propagation of light: the field of computer graphics has long sought efficient approximations to this problem. In this talk, I will present the DexRT radiative transfer program, a modern and open GPU-accelerated tool for the multidimensional non-LTE radiative transfer problem, built on recent advances in computer graphics, and discuss the importance of looking to other fields for enhancements and optimisations for astrophysical simulations.Dr Chris Coleman (University of Glasgow)Chris Osborne is a RAS Norman Lockyer Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow developing techniques to merge modern non-equilibrium radiative transfer for magnetohydrodynamic modelling to study the formation and evolution of cool condensations in the solar corona. Chris obtained a PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2021 on radiative transfer in solar flares, and has also worked as a research software engineer. 16:30 Dr Teresa Paneque-Carreno (University of Michigan)The recipe for planet formation: turbulence, dust, chemistry and a bit of luckPlanet formation is a chaotic and violent epoch. Dust and gas twirl and clash, mixing together to form a protoplanetary disk from where systems such as our own Solar System emerge. Using world/class telescopes like the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) we have been able to observe structures and measure chemical abundances within the protoplanetary disk. This talk will relate the observational evidence with physical processes that are core in the planet-forming process, with a focus on the chemical species present in these early stages.High spatial and spectral resolution of ALMA observations can be used to trace distinct regions of the protoplanetary disk through specific molecular tracers. This process allows us to build a 3D map of the disk and study the temperature, motions and conditions of the gaseous reservoir. Further analysis of molecular broadening is linked to turbulent motions that vary vertically. These results obtain the first insights into the physical instabilities that may be driving turbulence in protoplanetary disks and the molecular reservoir available for future planetary systems.Dr Teresa Paneque-Carreno (University of Michigan)Teresa Paneque-Carreno is a Chilean astronomer, she obtained her PhD in astronomy in 2024 from Leiden University and the European Southern Observatory. Currently she is a 51 Pegasi B and Michigan Society Research Fellow at the University of Michigan with the role of Assistant Professor. She combines observations and theoretical models to understand the physical-chemical conditions of planet formation around young stars. In parallel to her scientific work, she has a deep commitment to science communication, with an online community of over 1 million people who follow her across various social media platforms. She is author of the top-selling saga of books "El Universo Segun Carlota", available in spanish in several countries of latin america. Additionally, she is the first female ambassador to UNICEF in Chile, a country where she has been recognized by Forbes and other local rankings as one of the current female youth leaders. 17:00 Dr Hannah Wakeford (University of Bristol)“The Exotic nature of Exoplanet Clouds”Clouds are everywhere. Every world in our solar system from planets to moons and dwarf planets with an atmosphere also has clouds. When we look to distant exoplanets, planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, is it then surprising that clouds are there too!? Well yes to some extent. The distant alien worlds are unlike any in our solar system and their clouds are even more alien for us to imagine. I will talk about how environmental conditions define what kind of clouds will form on a planet. Work through some of the key discoveries on exoplanets from the Hubble Space Telescope and JWST. And show how we are discovering the exotic nature of exoplanet clouds and their role in their planet’s environment.Dr Hannah Wakeford (University of Bristol)Dr Hannah Wakeford is an associate professor in Astrophysics at the University of Bristol where she leads a team investigating the atmospheres of exoplanets often using space-based telescopes. Dr Wakeford is an accomplished researcher and science communicator having won the 2024 Philip Leverhulme Prize in Physics, written a 9-billion-year update to the best-selling popular science book Bang! With Drs Brian May and Chris Lintott and was the recipient of the 2025 RAS Fowler Award. 17:30 Dr Lisa-Marie Zessner (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen)"<a href="" title="" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The quest to understand clouds on the sun: simulating the formation and dynamics of solar prominences</a>"The existence of solar prominences has been known for hundreds of years. Already in the 1300s, they could be observed during solar eclipses as large bright features extending from the sun, but the nature of these phenomena was unknown. Nowadays, we know that they are relatively cool and dense plasma clouds suspended in the hot solar corona, supported by the magnetic field. Solar prominences form all over the sun and can have very different lifetimes, sizes and structures, depending on their environment. Although solar prominences are ubiquitous features in the solar atmosphere, understanding their formation and dynamics is still challenging. Due to their complex plasma properties and the interplay of different atmospheric layers, solar prominences remain difficult to model. We use the radiative magnetohydrodynamic code MURaM to simulate the formation and properties of solar prominences. MURaM simulates the solar surface and atmosphere within a cartesian box, from the upper part of the convection zone up to the solar corona. By setting appropriate initial conditions for the magnetic field, prominences with different sizes and structures form in our simulations. In this talk, I will provide an overview of our simulations and present results on the formation mechanisms, properties and structures of the simulated prominences in different setups.Dr Lisa-Marie Zessner (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen)I began studying astrophysics in Heidelberg in 2014, completing both my Bachelor's and Master's degrees there. During this time, I worked with cosmological simulations and models to study galaxy evolution and cosmic structure formation. At the end of 2020, I started my PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen. There, I began working with the MURaM code to set up simulations of solar prominences. Having finished my PhD thesis last year, I am now staying at MPS as a Postdoc to keep working on new and more advanced setups for our prominence models.17:55 Prof Mike Lockwood (President)Closing Remarks

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A&G Highlights Meeting - February 2026

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