Research news
DAINA Work Meeting in Lithuania
The project called "The history of C, N, and O in the Galaxy" is co-led by dr hab. Rodolfo Smiljanic from the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland and doc. dr Šarūnas Mikolaitis Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy, Vilnius University, Lithuania.
The teams met for the in-person meeting at the Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy of the Vilnius University. The team members presented updates of their current activities in the project, including a paper in advanced stage of preparations lead by the Polish team and the analysis of CNO abundances in high-resolution spectra obtained by the Lithuanian team at the Moletai Observatory. In addition, we held extensive discussions to plan the next steps of the project and establish the roles of each team member in several future publications.
Fourth issue of the WST Chronicle
This fourth issue of the WST Chronicle is available on-line. This issue includes a contribution about Extragalactic science with the WST, about the WST Exposure Time Calculator and more.
The Wide-Field Spectroscopic Telescope (WST) is a project to build a 12m telescope fully dedicated to multi-object spectroscopy. It will have a large field-of-view (> 3 sq deg) and combine in simultaneous operation high‐multiplex spectrographs of both low‐ and high‐resolution and a giant panoramic integral field spectrograph.
SAGA Team members are involved in the WST Science Team and R. Smiljanic is co-leading the working group responsible for the exoplanet, stellar, and Galactic science case. The WST project is funded by the European Union under Grant ID 101183153 awarded within the HORIZON-INFRA-2024-DEV-01 call.
New WST webpage!
The WST is the concept study for a next-generation facility, entirely dedicated to spectroscopic surveys. It will combine a large field of view (FoV), a high-multiplex and a giant integral field spectrograph (MOS and IFS). It will map hundreds of millions of galaxies and stars, and collect billions of spectra, revealing the Universe in unprecedented detail.
The new webpage presents a current description of the plans for the facility and instruments, of the consortium, and the driving science cases. There are also links to join the WST science team and to play with the current version of the WST exposure time calculator.
R. Smiljanic, PI of the SAGA Team is co-leader of the working group responsible for the exoplanet, stellar, and Galactic science case. The WST project is funded by the European Union under Grant ID 101183153 awarded within the HORIZON-INFRA-2024-DEV-01 call.
Summer Student Programme of CAMK 2026
The Summer Student Program is intended for 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-year undergraduate students in physics or astronomy. In exceptional cases, younger students and students from technical universities may be accepted. The duration of each individual program should be 4–6 weeks.
Those interested in participating should contact the selected supervisor directly via the email address provided to arrange the details. Applications should include the supervisor’s name, the planned dates of the project, and academic CV. The application deadline is May 31, 2026.. Successful candidates will be notified by email. Please note that on-site participation is limited to EU citizens only.
Two projects are offered by scientists of the SAGA Team: 1) "Understanding the Milky Way Galaxy with Gaia" by Dr. Arthur Alencastro Puls and 2) "Aluminium abundances across multiple wavelength regimes in stellar spectra" by Dr. Heitor Ernandes.
The date for Gaia DR4 has been announced!
Gaia DR4 is expected on December 2, 2026! There are many significant changes in DR4. A few are listed below but more details (including a list of data tables and their description) can be found in the Gaia DR4 content webpage linked above.
- Gaia DR4 will contain a large number and diversity of data products. Lower-level data such as the individual observations underlying the source-level catalogue parameters will be released as well.
- The total data volume of Gaia DR4 is approximately 500 TB with the largest fraction associated to the lower-level products (The total data volume of Gaia DR3 is 10 TB)
- Data will be published for all processed sources, which amount to about 2.8 billion sources in total.
- Time series will be provided for all data types (astrometry, photometry, and spectroscopy).
- The reference epoch for Gaia DR4 is J2017.5. The reference epoch is different for each Gaia data release, and that the reference epoch for Gaia DR3 was J2016.0, for Gaia DR2 was J2015.5, and for Gaia DR1 was J2015.0.
- Gaia DR4 photometric passbands will be published to document how the Gaia DR4 magnitudes are computed, and to allow reproducing the analysis of the data.
R. Smiljanic, PI of the SAGA Team is part of the Gaia Science Team.
Ph.D. student Leda Berni visiting the SAGA Team
Leda is doing her Ph.D. work under the supervision of Laura Magrini at the Arcetri Observatory in Florence. She has experience in the area of Galactic archaeology and the analysis of high-resolution spectra. During March and April 2026, she will be visiting the SAGA Team at CAMK/PAN, Warsaw, to work on the analysis of ESPRESSO data of wide binary stars.
During her stay at the SAGA Team she will be collaborating with other team members, in particular the PhD students John Martinez Fernandez and Sergen Ozdemir. We will collaborate with Leda on her project about the chemical composition of wide binary stars. These stars should have been born with the same chemical composition and, since they are widely separated, did not suffer any episode of mass exchange. Leda is implementing a high-precision differential analysis to check for the chemical homogeneity of the stellar pair. Chemical differences that correlate with condensation temperature may indicate that one of the stars engulfed planetary material in the past; volatile elements like CNO are not expected to be affected. The ESPRESSO data are ideal for this task, thanks to their high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio. This exciting project may reveal clues of otherwise hidden planetary systems.
The visit is possible thanks partially to funds from a DAINA grant awarded by the Polish National Science Center.
WST Special Session at EAS 2026
The Special Session will take place as part of the Annual Meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS). This year, the main goal is to highlight and discuss with the astronomical community the strong synergies that the Wide-field Spectroscopic Telescope (WST) will have with other major observatories in the 2040s. Abstract deadline is March 3rd.
The programme will include presentations about the WST concept and science and also invited speakers discussing the scientific synergy of WST with missions and projects covering topics in multi-messenger astronomy, time-domain science, science from space-based observatories, and telescopes in the radio domain.
WST is designed as a 12m aperture telescope with simultaneous operation of a large field-of-view (3 sq. degree), high-multiplex (30,000) multi-object spectrograph (MOS) with two spectral resolutions (R~40,000 and 4,000) and a giant 3x3 arcmin integral field spectrograph (IFS).
R. Smiljanic, PI of the SAGA Team is part of the SOC of the Special Session. SAGA Team members are involved in the WST Science Team and R. Smiljanic is co-leading the working group responsible for the exoplanet, stellar, and Galactic science case. The WST project is funded by the European Union under Grant ID 101183153 awarded within the HORIZON-INFRA-2024-DEV-01 call.
Gaia Symposium at EAS 2026
The symposium will take place as part of the Annual Meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS). Abstract deadline is March 3rd. The symposium will cover a wide range of science where Gaia has a role to play:
- Gaia DR3: Highlight Science including a review of recent major science highlights from Gaia DR3, Gaia FPR and science discovery enabled by Gaia, with attention to the potential of Gaia DR4 and look ahead to Gaia DR5.
- Gaia / GREAT/ MW-Gaia / Gaia Unlimited Status plus update on GaiaNIR status towards Voyage 2050/ L5
- Gaia EDR3/DR3/FPR: Highlight Science (The Milky Way as a Galaxy)
- Gaia EDR3/DR3/FPR: Highlight Science (The Birth, Life and Death of Stars)
- Gaia EDR3/DR3/FPR: Highlight Science (from Solar system to reference frames)
- Gaia networking and ground based synergies with Gaia
- Lunch session with an update on the Gaia Archive and Data Access, activities within the MW-Gaia Doctoral Network and also an opportunity for poster presenters to deliver a 'lightening' talk of their (e-)poster
R. Smiljanic, PI of the SAGA Team is part of the SOC of the Symposium in connection to his participation in the Gaia Science Team.
Third issue of the WST Chronicle
This third issue of the WST Chronicle was published in January 23, 2026. This issue includes a contribution co-authored by R. Smiljanic describing the potential of WST to contribute to exoplanet, stellar and Galactic science in the 2040s. Among other articles, there is also a discussion about synergies of WST with other future facilities, such as the ELT, the Einstein Telescope, and SKA.
The Wide-Field Spectroscopic Telescope (WST) is a project to build a 12m telescope fully dedicated to multi-object spectroscopy. It will have a large field-of-view (> 3 sq deg) and combine in simultaneous operation high‐multiplex spectrographs of both low‐ and high‐resolution and a giant panoramic integral field spectrograph.
SAGA Team members are involved in the WST Science Team and R. Smiljanic is co-leading the working group responsible for the exoplanet, stellar, and Galactic science case. The WST project is funded by the European Union under Grant ID 101183153 awarded within the HORIZON-INFRA-2024-DEV-01 call.