SGAA/SSAA: Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Astrophysik und Astronomie
One highlight of Year 2024 was the SSAA General Assembly (GA), which took place on 3 October, 2024 in the Aula of the University of Zürich. It was attended by about 20-30 participants. This one-day GA includeda business meeting in the morning followed by scientific session with oral contributions from different fields of the Swiss astronomy landscape from all academic levels.
Specific highlights of the GA were that the SSAA Edith Alice Müller Award for the best PhD theses finished in 2023 were given to Beatice Kulterer from the University of Bern and Guillaume Chaverot from University of Geneva. Both awardees gave award presentations at the GA. Our warmest congratulations for both awardees for their achievement. For details on the GA 2024 please visit the following link: SSAA GA 2024
The SSAA provided the Swiss contribution to the Journal Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A). This contribution ensures that researchers affiliated with Swiss research institutes can publish their research articles in this journal free of charge. Articles published in A&A are open access.
The well-known «Saas-Fee Advanced Course» is a winter school that has taken place practically annually since 1971. In 2024 its title was « From Stars to Planets in the Space-based Photometry Era» and was held from 28 January to 3 February 2024 in Saas Fee. Three internationally well-known researchers gave lectures throughout the week: Dr. Maria Pia Di Mauro, Prof. Aline Vidotto, Dr. James Owen. The number of participants had been limited to 60. The course has been organized by Gaël Buldgen, Patrick Eggenberger, Vincent Bourrier, Svetlana Berdyugina, Sylvia Ekström, Devesh Nandal. Further details can be found under the following website: Saas Fee Course 2024.
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B) The president of SSAA, Margit Haberreiter, participated at the Business Meeting of the European Astronomical Society 2024 (online) as representative of the affiliated soceity.
The SSAA supports early career scientist in building up and strengthening their network and collaboration. Each year SSAA announces a call for travel grant. As an outcome of the 2024 call the SSAA supported 10 early career scientists with travel grants. The awardees areLisa Brandenburg (University of Bern), Luca ThéoSciarini (University de Genève), Anna Velichko (University de Genève), Mathilda Fatton (University of Bern), Tanita Ramburuth-Hurt (University de Genève) Andrea Francesco Battaglia (ETHZ), Francesco Vitali, (IRSOL, Locarno), Khaled Al Moulla (University de Genève), Jeanne Davoult (University of Bern), Zepei Xing (University de Genève).
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An important element of the SSAA activities is to foster outreach activities. In 2024, the SSAA supported 2 projects, as briefly described in the following. First, the "Open-doors day at Istituto ricerche solari Aldo e Cele Daccò (IRSOL) and Specola" in Locarno-Monti have been supported. The event took place May 15, 2024 and included the following activities: Telescope and observing room visit, Spectrograph room visit, Callisto radio antenna visit, Outdoor solar observations and interactive experimental activities with spectral lamps, diffraction gratings and polarizers,
The second outreach project supported in 2024 was "Wind, Sand and Stars
Building long-term astronomy exchanges with Moroccan schools", which was organized jointly with the Saint-Exupery Youth Foundation. An air rallye from Toulouse in France to Tarfaya in south Morocco, where the “Little Prince” got born in Saint-Ex’s mind. In 2024, the Foundation inaugurated a bivouac “Of Sand and Stars” dedicated to astronomy. In addition, a call was prepared to select 5 students across Morocco who joined team in Tarfaya and contributed to the outreach activities. The SSAA supported outreach funding for pedagogical material and support for a professional outreach officer to join the team who has a lot of experience about astronomy outreach with kids. As such this astronomy outreach activity reached a large community young people.