Research news
New version of the HRMOS science white paper
HRMOS (High-Resolution Multi-Object Spectrograph), is a next-generation instrument that will be proposed for the ESO Very Large Telescope within the VLT Beyond 2030 roadmap. Current and planned facilities offer either multi-object spectroscopy or ultra-high spectral resolution, but not both. HRMOS fills this gap by combining very high spectral resolution (R = 80 000), multi-object capability (50-60 fibers), optical coverage down to 385 nm, and radial-velocity stability(5-10 m/s), enabling transformative studies in Galactic and extragalactic astrophysics.
The science cases presented in the White Paper make use of precise measurements of elemental abundances, isotopic ratios, line profiles, and radial velocities for large stellar samples, including crowded fields, star clusters, the Galactic bulge, and nearby dwarf galaxies. HRMOS will address key questions on the age of the oldest stellar populations through nucleocosmochronology, the formation and survival of planetary systems, the assembly history of the Milky Way and satellites, the origin of the heaviest elements, stellar evolution, and the chemical and dynamical properties of the interstellar and circumgalactic medium.
Heitor Ernandes, post-doc at the SAGA Team, is member of the HRMOS Science Team and contributed to the document. R. Smiljanic, PI of the SAGA Team, is member of the HRMOS Core Science Team and co-leader of the Working Group on Nucleosynthesis and Origin of the Elements. His participation in the project has received supported by the OPUS-LAP/WEAVE grant of NCN number 2022/47/I/ST9/02358 entitled "The old Milky Way: a holistic approach for the accurate analysis of metal-poor stars".
Current status of WST presented at the SPIE conference
WST is a 12-metre wide-field spectroscopic survey telescope being designed for the 2040s. The current design includes 54 low-resolution spectrographs fed by 30,000 fibres, 8-16 high-resolution spectrographs fed by 2,000 fibres, and a large panoramic low-resolution integral-field spectrograph. Supported by Horizon Europe, the concept study has refined the science cases, facility architecture, operations model, sustainability strategy, and technology roadmap. The resulting reference design demonstrates that the WST is both scientifically transformative and technically feasible, while identifying the developments required to mitigate the remaining risks.
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.
SAGA Team takes part in the EAS Annual Meeting 2026
The Ph.D. student John E. Martinez-Fernandez presented a contributed talk in “Special Session 33 : Pushing the frontiers: precision spectroscopy of FGK stars”. The talk was entitled "Precise chemical analysis of open cluster stars using an automated pipeline with high-resolution UVES spectra". In this contribution, John introduced the CHESS pipeline, which processed about 9900 stars, and discussed the results for stars in open clusters.
R. Smiljanic also presented in Special Session 33 with a contributed talk entitled “Accurate atmospheric parameters for metal-poor stars using flux-calibrated spectra”. This talk presented preliminary results of the analysis of X-Shooter flux-calibrated spectra being developed by Deepak, postdoc in the team.
Thibault Boulet, post-doc in the SAGA Team, presented a poster entitled "AI-Asteroseismic Stellar Ages for Dwarfs and Red Giants" with results of his investigation of the ages and chemical composition of solar metallicity stars.
Arthur Alencastro Puls, post-doc in the SAGA Team, presented a poster entitled "Refining our understanding of the metal-poor Milky Way with a holistic calibration for atmospheric parameters" describing a consolidated sample of almost 10 000 metal-poor stars assembled from several large surveys.
Finally, a summary of the DAINA project "The history of C, N, and O in the Galaxy" was presented by S. Mikolaitis, of Vilnius University.
The participation of John E. Martinez Fernandez and Thibaul Boulet was made possible by the NCN Sonata Bis grant number 2019/34/E/ST9/00133. The participation of R. Smiljanic and Arthur Alencastro Puls was made possible by the NCN Opus LAP grant number 2022/47/I/ST9/02358 and the project is co-funded by the German DFG. The DAINA project (2024/52/L/ST9/00220) is co-funded by NCN and the Research Council of Lithuania.
Polish Consortium becomes partner of 4MOST!
4MOST is a fibre-fed spectroscopic survey facility installed at the VISTA 4-m telescope of European Southern Observatory (ESO). The facility is able to simultaneously obtain spectra of ~2400 objects distributed over an hexagonal field-of-view of 4.2 square degrees. This high multiplex of 4MOST, combined with its high spectral resolution, enables detection of chemical and kinematic substructure in the stellar halo, bulge and thin and thick discs of the Milky Way, thus help unravel the origin of our home galaxy. The instrument also has enough wavelength coverage to secure velocities of extra-galactic objects over a large range in redshift, thus yielding measurements of the evolution of galaxies, black holes, and the structure of the cosmos.
The Polish Consortium of the “4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope” Project (Pol4MOST) was formed in 2022 with the aim to acquiring fund for the participation of four scientists from Polish institutions in the 4MOST project. The four scientists included in the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2022 are: Boudewijn Roukema, Nicolaus Copernicus University (UMK), Agnieszka Pollo, National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ), Maciej Bilicki, Center for Theoretical Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences (CFT PAN), and Rodolfo Smiljanic, Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences (CAMK PAN).
In June 2026, Pol4MOST was awarded funding from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education to confirm its participation in the 4MOST project. Since then, by the MoU signed with the 4MOST consortium, the four named scientists are partners of the 4MOST project and can additionally indicate one post-doc and any number of PhD students in their group for participation in 4MOST.
Participation at the 4MOST project is funded by a grant awarded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MNiSW grant 2026/WK/06).
WST Busy Week in France
During the meeting, all science and technical working groups presented the status of their work. In particular, R. Smiljanic, P.I. of the SAGA Team, presented a talk entitled “Galactic, stellar and exoplanet science with WST” on Monday, June 22nd, explaining the transformative science cases proposed for WST in the Galactic science working group and what do these cases require from the telescope and instrumentation.
Three discussion sessions were planned with help of the Galactic science working group on the following topics: “Synergies & constraints: Time domain and Galactic science”, “MOS-HR spectrograph: Science and top level requirements”, and "Dwarf galaxies and the Magellanic Clouds". During the week, several additional discussions between members of different working groups took place. A list of actions and deadlines to advance with the next phases of the WST project was prepared.
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.
DAINA CNO project presented in a conference
Bruno Ćurjurić, Ph.D. student at the Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy, Vilnius University, Lithuania, participated in the "Exploring the Evolution of CNOPS Elements from Earth and Space" conference that took place between 2-6 Feb. 2026, in Sexten, Italy. During the conference, Bruno presented a talk about the "History of CNO in the Milky Way" showing some of the very preliminary results of the collaboration
The project aims to provide a comprehensive and homogeneous analysis of CNO abundances across all major Galactic stellar populations. By combining new spectroscopic observations with data from previous and upcoming large spectroscopic surveys and applying robust calibration methods, the project will trace the chemical enrichment of CNO over time and across the Milky Way. Linking abundances with stellar ages, evolutionary stages, and orbital information will allow us to study the effects of stellar migration and internal mixing.
Proceedings of the contribution are now available in the link above. In Poland, the project is funded by the DAINA grant 2024/52/L/ST9/00220 awarded by the Polish National Science Center. In Lithuania, it is funded by the Research Council of Lithuania.
New paper accepted for publication!
This paper presents an analysis of red giant stars from open clusters to better understand the extra-mixing process through the determination of CNO abundances and the 12C/13C, 16O/17O and 16O/18O isotopic ratios. High-resolution and high signal-to-noise spectra of stars in the NGC188 cluster were obtained with the ESPaDOnS spectrograph at the CFHT in the visible region. The stars in the other clusters (NGC188, NGC2682, NGC3680, NGC5822, IC4756, NGC6633, NGC3532, NGC6281, and NGC5460) were observed with the CRIRES spectrograph at the VLT.
The results in the visible and infrared support the occurrence and predicted mass dependence of thermohaline mixing on the red giant branch and of rotation-induced mixing on the main sequence. Variations of the initial abundances of 17O and 18O may be needed to explain the dispersion of the oxygen isotopic ratios in red giant stars.
This work was led by Saulo de Oliveira Cantanhêde, former Master Student at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and counted with the collaboration of R. Smiljanic, P.I. of the SAGA Team. Our contribution was funded by the DAINA grant 2024/52/L/ST9/00220 awarded by the Polish National Science Center.
New paper accepted for publication!
This paper presents an analysis that derived precise differential abundances for the binary system HD 129171/HD 129209. The goal was to explore the planet engulfment hypothesis proposed in the literature to explain chemical peculiarities observed in this system. In this work, we focus particularly on the Be abundance, a light element that can serve as a diagnostic of engulfment events for solar-type stars.
The results confirmed a large difference in [Fe/H] (0.120 ± 0.004 dex) and A(Li) (−1.00 ± 0.02 dex) between the stars. Other elements show a trend with condensation temperature, usually interpreted as a signature of planet engulfment. We found a differences in Be abundances of 0.20 ± 0.04 dex. The abundance pattern of the pair is reasonably reproduced by an engulfment model of 11.2 Earth masses of rocky material.
This work was led by Anne Rathsam, Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences, University of São Paulo, Brazil, and counted with the collaboration of R. Smiljanic, P.I. of the SAGA Team.
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.