News and Publications

The CET-3PO group has hosted the BlackGEM science collaboration meeting, which took place at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Barcelona on 17th and 18th of April 2025. With all three telescopes actively taking data, we focused on improving calibrations, new exciting science, planning of follow-up resources... and also sampling the local paella!

Hugo Tranin, postdoctoral researcher of the CET-3PO team, has led the publication of a new catalogue of 154,494 Yellow Supergiants based on Hubble Space Telescope archival data. The sample includes massive stars in galaxies up to 20 Mpc, which are possible Luminous Red Novae progenitor systems. The full article is available as Open Access here.

The CET-3PO postdoctoral researcher Marco Gómez has led a successful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) proposal to observe pre-existing dust in the interacting supernova SN2024xuo. This transient first erupted as a low-luminosity precursor, suggesting a possible stellar merger origin. These Director Discretionary Time observations (Program 9251) will take place during June-July 2025.

The CET-3PO team successfully completed two observing nights with NOT/FIES to characterise candidate progenitor systems of luminous red novae.

We also had the pleasure to meet with good friends, such as Dr. David Jones (IAC), Dr. Jan van Roestel (UvA) and even R2D2!

The CET-3PO group has led the organization of a specialized workshop on Common Envelope Evolution, held at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Barcelona (10-14th of June 2024). We had 40 on-site and 10 online participants.

The CET-3PO group has led the organization of a mini-symposium about Astrophysical Transients at the meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA) 2024 in Granada. M. Wavasseur and H. Tranin presented their work on LRNe outbursts and search for precursors.

The event was attended by ~50 people! Transients is an exciting and quickly growing field in Spain.