The Waltraut-Seitter-Publication award 2024 is presented to
Prachi Khatri for the publication entitled “HYACINTH: HYdrogen And Carbon chemistry in the INTerstellar medium in Hydro simulations” published in Astronomy & Astrophysics in 2024. The publication describes a new sub-grid model called HYACINTH – HYdrogen And Carbon chemistry in the INTerstellar medium in Hydro simulations – for computing the non-equilibrium abundances of H2 and its carbon-based tracers, namely CO, C, and C+, in cosmological simulations of galaxy formation.
The ceremony took place during the 3rd members assembly of the CRC 1601 in Vallendar on March 27, 2025. Prachi Khatri: “I am grateful to the SFB Executive Board for recognising this work and my contribution. I thank my supervisors and collaborators for their guidance throughout the project. This research was supported by SFB956 and SFB1601, which enabled a productive collaboration between Cologne and Bonn. Finally, I sincerely thank abj-sensorik for creating this wonderful opportunity, it’s deeply encouraging as a young scientist.“
The award winner will present her work in the SFB colloquium on April 15, 2025.
Waltraut Seitter was a German astronomer and became the first woman in Germany to hold an astronomy chair.
Waltraut Carola Seitter was born in Zwickau in 1930, where her father worked as an engineer with the Horch automobile company. She went to school in Cologne, where she finished high school in 1949 (after jobs as tramway ticket collector, refugee aide and draftswoman), and entered the university to study physics, mathematics, chemistry and astronomy. She continued her studies at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts with a grant from the Fulbright Program, obtained her Master of Arts in physics in 1955, and became an astronomy instructor. From 1958 to 1962 she worked at Hoher List Observatory of Bonn University, obtained her Ph.D., and held the positions of assistant, observer and adjunct professor at Bonn University. In 1967, she was a guest professor of the American Astronomical Society at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, afterward professor at Smith College (since 1973, Eliza Appleton Haven Professor for Astronomy). In 1975, she was called to the chair of astronomy at Muenster University in Germany (the first woman in Germany to hold an astronomy chair), and became director of the astronomical institute up to her retirement in 1995.
When in Bonn, she worked on problems of stellar statistics and on spectral classification of stars, publishing the Bonn Spectral Atlas (in two volumes). In Muenster, with a dedicated team of young researchers, she organized the Muenster Redshift Project (MRSP), a method to derive redshifts from UK Schmidt telescope objective prism plates, and the Muenster Red Sky Survey, a galaxy catalog of the southern hemisphere, based on ESO Schmidt direct red plates. With the MRSP data, the first indications of the action of the cosmological constant were found, shortly before major supernova searches established its existence with certainty.
During most of her career, she also did research on novae and related eruptive stars. Exhibits arranged by her include Women in Astronomy, and Science in Exile (Smith College), as well as Kepler and his times (Muenster 1980). She also organized several international astronomical meetings. Since 1975, Waltraut Seitter was married to Hilmar Duerbeck, a fellow astronomer.
The asteroid (4893) Seitter, discovered in 1986, is named after her. (From Wikipedia)
Day 1
25.03.2025
Lecture Hall
seminar room 1
seminar room 2
seminar room3
08.00
Departure Cologne
08.45
Departure Bonn
9.45-10.30
Registration / welcome coffee
Chair: Lucas Labadie
10.30 – 10.45
Stefanie Walch-Gassner
Welcome
10:45 – 11:00
Stefanie Walch-Gassner
CRC 1601 – the big questions
11:00 – 11:25
Progress on project area A
11:25 – 11:50
Progress on project area B
11:50 – 12:15
Progress on project area C
12:15 – 12:25
Volker Ossenkopf-Okada
Sustainability Board
12.30 – 13.30
Lunchbuffet
Chair:
13:30 – 13:45
Working group ogrzanizers: Chinmaya Nagar, Divita Gupta, Ina Galić, Masato Kobayashi, Simon Dannhauer, Vittoria Brugaletta, Wonju Kim, and Zein Bazzi
Achievement and progress report from SFB working groups.
13:45 – 14:00
Planning of discussion rounds
14.00 – 15.00
Student Meeting (incl. Student Council)
PI meeting
Discussion groups
Discussion groups
15:00 – 16:00
Discussion groups
PI meeting
Discussion groups
Discussion groups
16:00 – 16:30:00
Coffee break
Chair:
16.00 – 16.25
Petra Fackendahl, Isabelle Breloy
Report from TP Z & Financial
16:30 – 17:50
all
Discussion groups
Discussion groups
Discussion groups
Discussion groups
18.00
Dinner
Day 2
26.03.2025
Lecture Hall
seminar room 1
seminar room 2
seminar room3
08.00 – 09.00
Breakfast
Chair:
9:00 – 9:30
TBD
Wrap up of day 1, results of discussion groups
9:30 – 10:00
Discussion groups
Sustainability Board Meeting
Diversity Board Meeting
Executive Board Meeting
10:00 – 10:30
Discussion groups
Discussion groups
Discussion groups
10:30 – 11:00
Coffee Break
11.00-15.00
Hiking
Chair: Dominik Riechers
15:00 – 16:00
all
Poster presentations (2min)
16:00 – 17:00
Coffee Break & Poster reception
17:00 – 18:30
all
Discussion groups
Discussion groups
Discussion groups
Discussion groups
19:00 – 24:00
Dinnerparty
Day 3
27.03.2025
Lecture Hall
08.00 – 09.00
Breakfast
Chair:
9:00 – 10:30
TBD
Wrap up of day 2, results of discussion groups
10.30 – 11.00
Coffee Break
Chair:
11.00 – 11.15
Report by the Sustainability Board
11.15 – 11.30
Report by the Student Council
11.30 – 11.45
Report by the Diversity Board
12:10 – 12:25
Summary
12.30 – 13.30
Lunchbuffet
13.30 – 15.30
Members Assembly (obligatory)
16:00
Departure
Project Area C
The observational projects C1 to C3 and related theory projects C5 and C6 cover observations of the habitats of massive stars from tens of parsec to Mpc scales in “typical”, starburst, and AGN host galaxies over 13 billion years of the history of the universe, critically complementing the other project areas in scales, diversity of environments, and cosmic time. A combination of the most sensitive facilities like ALMA and JWST with new wide-field observatories like FYST/CCAT-prime make it possible to reach both the level of detail and statistical robustness to push these studies to the next level. To prepare for the future, critical detector and readout technology development is delivered by projects C7 and C8, as necessary to build a new generation of instruments that speed up the FYST/CCAT-prime surveys in C2 and C3 by an order of magnitude in the later funding phases. In tandem with these developments, the laboratory spectroscopy and modelling of molecular ions done in C4 are critical to fully exploit a suite of new key tracers of massive star-forming environments in the Early Universe, as targeted in C1.
Image credits: C3/C6 from Karoumpis et al. 2022; C4 from Töpfer et al. 2020; C7 provided by N. Honingh; C8 from Klein et al. 2012; Galaxy composite for C1, C2 and C5 is a composite image of NGC 628 with ALMA (orange) and Hubble (blue) data provided by NRAO/AUI/NSF, B. Saxton: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NASA/Hubble; for the connection to project areas A and B we show Orion.
Project Area B
B studies the habitats of massive stars on galactic scales. We show a portion of the Galactic disc plane as observed with Spitzer in purple and with ATLASGAL in orange and the corresponding molecular clouds identified in SEDIGISM (credit: Wyrowski; Duarte-Cabral et al. 2021) showcasing the Milky Way part of projects B1 & B2. In B1, parsec-scale observations of Milky Way massive clumps are combined with synthetic observations based on high-resolution simulations7. In B2, high-feedback regions are studied (credit: Simon). B3 will study massive star habitats in nearby galaxies (credit: Bigiel/PHANGS). B2 and B3 make use of the new CHAI instrument to be installed at FYST/CCAT-prime. The low-frequency channel of CHAI is used to study the whole Galactic disc, the Magellanic Clouds, and nearby galaxies in CO (J = 4 – 3) and [CI]. The high-frequency channel of CHAI is developed in the first CRC funding period in B7 (credit: Graf/Honingh). B4 studies the impact of magnetic fields in different environments using different techniques (e.g. dust polarisation; the synthetic map shown is taken from Seifried et al. 2019). B5 studies the late stages of massive star habitats (supernova remnants) using a new combination observations towards pulsar sight- lines (credit: Yao et al. 2021) with state-of-the-art simulations of the multi-phase interstellar medium that include supernovae (see also B6; credit: Walch; Rathjen et al. 2021). In B8, the (far-)infrared spectra of molecular anions (e.g. PAHs) are recorded in the laboratory in order to better constrain the observed emission of massive star habitats (credit: Schlemmer)
Image credits: B1 background: ESO/APEX/ATLASGAL consortium/NASA/GLIMPSE consortium/ESA/Planck.
Project Area A
Habitats of massive stars at high resolution. We combine different methodological pillars. Three observational projects study different phases of massive star formation at high resolution. We include hot molecular cores (A1), massive star formation in different galactic habitats (A2), and the infrared view on massive stars in different environments (A3). These observational efforts are combined with laboratory astrophysics (A4) measuring the spectra of complex molecules and high-resolution 3D simulations of massive star formation and star cluster evolution (A5), as well as detailed modelling of PDRs and dust (A6) needed to interpret the observations.
Image credits: background: Gaia’s view of the Milky Way (credit: ESO/Gaia/DPAC). Foreground: (A1, A2 and A4) ALMA emission spectrum of a hot core and a synthetic, laboratory-based spectrum mirrored in absorption (credit: Endres et al. 2021); (A1) image of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), with the zoom-in showing the ALMA 1.3 mm continuum emission of a cluster-forming region in the LMC (credit: Hamedani Golshan); (A2) ALMA observations of a super-stellar cluster progenitor in Sgr B2 with converging dense filaments and an expanding molecular outflow (credit: Schwörer, Sánchez-Monge); (A3) collage of massive star binaries in Orion (credit: GRAVITY collaboration, M. Karl); (A5) massive star formation simulation with the MHD code FLASH (credit: Klepitko, Walch); (A6) Orion Bar in HCO+ with PDR model description (credit: Röllig, Ossenkopf-Okada).
image credit
1_SFB2023_overview_title_asm: SgrB2: Schwörer, Sánchez-Monge (A); Orion KL: Bally et al. 2017 (A); M16: NASA, Jeff Hester, and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University) (A-B); Crab nebula: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University) (B); Antennae: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO). Visible light image: the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (A); M82: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/UofA/ESA/AURA/JHU (B-C); Universe: J.Neidel/J.Onorbe/MPIA (C).