“At the conference, where 33 talks were given by international specialists in the study of accretion processes onto black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs, the extreme physical conditions in the neighborhood of black holes and other compact objects as they accrete material from stars very close to them was analyzed in detail” explain Montserrat Armas Padilla and Teo Muñoz Darías, the IAC researchers who were presidents of the international scientific committee which organized the event. “Talks were also presented -they added- showing evidence of how the properties of the intense radiation emitted during this process are related to the ejections of matter in the form of jets and winds, pointing up the importance of multi-frequency studies. These include the use of X-ray satellites, and radiotelescopes, in addition to observations in the visible and the infrared, which are increasingly important in this field, and in which the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC) is playing an outstanding role”.
During the meeting there was also discussion on the main characteristics of the populations of compact objects, both inside the Galaxy and in other galaxies, some of which are good candidates for detections as new sources of gravitational waves in the near future.
Accompanying the conference there was a free popular lecture on Astronomy, open to the general public, given by Pablo Rodriguez Gil, a researcher at the IAC and the University of La Laguna (ULL). Also there were astronomical observations through telescopes, supervised by researchers from the Local Organizing Committee, IAC researchers Felipe Jiménez Ibarra, Daniel Mata Sanchez, and Juan Antonio Fernández Ontiveros. Over 70 local people from La Gomera and visitors to the Island attended each of these events. The conference participants also had the opportunity to make a guide tour of the Garajonay National Park, which included a walk through the Cedar Forest.
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