26th Australian Institute of Physics Congress and the Australian and New Zealand Conference on Optics and Photonics

Session

AIP ASTRO 2

ASTRO

8 Dec 2026, 11:00

Belinda Hutchinson Building (The University of Sydney )

Conveners

AIP ASTRO 2

• Milo Langker (University of Sydney)

313. The GECKOS Survey: Dynamics of Globular Clusters in Milky Way-mass Galaxies

Sadaf(Zahra) Aliakbarzadeh (University of New South Wales)

08/12/2026, 11:00

AIP | Astronomy (ASTRO)

Invited talk

Globular clusters (GCs) provide complementary tracers of the assembly history and dynamics of spiral galaxies. While GC systems in elliptical galaxies have been studied extensively, dynamical studies of the GC systems of spirals beyond the Local Group remain limited. In this talk, I will present results from the GECKOS survey, focusing on 19 Milky Way-mass edge-on galaxies. Using deep MUSE...

122. Causal analysis of the theoretical impact of environment on galaxy stellar spin

Caroline Foster (University of New South Wales)

08/12/2026, 11:30

AIP | Astronomy (ASTRO)

Contributed Oral

Over the past decades, spatially resolved spectroscopic studies have confirmed that galaxies come in two broad dynamical families: fast vs. slow rotators. Slow rotators are on average older, more likely to have higher stellar masses and typically found in denser environments. With age and stellar mass being the strongest predictors of galaxy spin, the diminishing influence of environment has...

825. Gaps, clusters, and entropy: highlights from the most recent gravitational-wave transient catalog

Eric Thrane (Monash University)

08/12/2026, 11:45

AIP | Astronomy (ASTRO)

Invited talk

The LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA (LVK) collaborations have announced the detection of over 260 binary black hole signals. Each one encodes information about the masses and spins of merging black holes. In this talk, I describe several highlights from this black-hole haul. First, using the loudest event, GW250114, we experimentally verified Hawking’s famous area law, which predicts that the surface...

89. The Lucky Country: The science case for an Australian gravitational wave detector

Fiona Panther (University of Western Australia)

08/12/2026, 12:15

AIP | Astronomy (ASTRO)

Contributed Oral

Since the first detection of gravitational wave (GW) emission from coalescences between black holes and neutron stars, we have only observed one confirmed multi-messenger detection: GW170817. This single event showed the promise GWs and multi-messenger astrophysics have to reveal new information about the physics of matter at densities unachievable in terrestrial laboratories. GW170817 also...