Announcement
We are pleased to announce the Hong Kong Workshop on Evolved Stars and Astrophysical Masers, which will widely cover subjects about the physical and chemical nature of evolved stars (of all mass spectrum) and their circumstellar envelopes/shells as well as astrophysical masers.
Over the past several years, we have seen significant trends in the evolved star field. A notable one must be the release of brand-new, infrared survey data, such as Spitzer, AKARI, WISE, and Herschel. More to the point, some leading-edge radio telescopes providing distinctive capabilities, such as ALMA and SKA, have recently been put into operation or will soon be constructed. We are about to witness the extremely exciting era with these new capabilities. At the same time, the population of researchers and students in the evolved star field has rapidly grown, in particular, in the East Asian region. Therefore, we would like to have an opportunity to get together and exchange ideas on latest topics and ongoing/forthcoming projects among international colleagues in this field. This workshop is also intended to commemorate the retirement of Dr. Shuji Deguchi, who has been contributing in this field over 40 years.
The topics we would like to discuss are, for example:
1. AGB, Post-AGB, PPNe, PNe
2. Red supergiants, pre-explosion mass-loss of massive evolved stars
3. Circumstellar masers, astrophysical masers
4. Circumstellar chemistry, dust formation
5. Pulsation, binarity and their effects on dust formation and mass-loss
6. Novae and supernovae probed by masers
7. New observational approaches with AKARI, VLBA, eVLA, ALMA, SKA etc.