The RR Lyrae 2017 Conference

We cordially invite you to the RR Lyrae 2017 Conference!

Classical pulsators, Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars, continue to play a crucial role in astrophysics. They are invaluable tools for studying stellar populations and the history of star formation, for tracing galactic structure and kinematics, for measuring galactic and extragalactic distances and for testing stellar evolution and pulsation theory.

With the advent of ultra-precise space photometry and with data stemming from big ground-based surveys, our knowledge of classical pulsators is now growing at an increasingly fast rate. This progress is also aided by impressive improvements in interferometric techniques and in analysis of pulsators in binary systems. The release of the Gaia astrometric catalogue is the next big step in this process. With recent findings, the classical pulsators turn out to have properties that do not fit the simple classical picture. (Ir)regularity of the lightcurves and presence of additional modes beyond the radial ones, show that the nature of their pulsations is more complex and may provide more diagnostics regarding their inner structure, than previously assumed.

In this meeting we want to focus on these new developments in our understanding of the pulsations of RR Lyrae stars and Cepheids. We want to bring together both observers and theorists, to discuss dynamical properties of classical pulsators (radial double-mode pulsation, Blazhko modulation, period doubling, low-dimensional chaos, non-radial modes), recent improvements in their modeling and observations (including spectroscopy and interferometry), their potential for diagnostics of stellar interiors, as well as their applications in other fields of astrophysics (distance scale, galactic structure, population studies). The main focus of the meeting will be on the RR Lyrae stars, but discussion of important recent results on Cepheids, both classical and Type II, will be essential to provide the bigger picture for our improved understanding of stellar structure and evolution and their cosmological implications.

This is the second conference in a series. The previous conference, RRL2015, took place in Visegrad, Hungary.

Conference chairs

Katrien Kolenberg,
Pawel Moskalik,
Radek Smolec

Sponsors