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

Session

AIP ASTRO 1

ASTRO

7 Dec 2026, 11:30

Belinda Hutchinson Building (The University of Sydney )

Conveners

AIP ASTRO 1

• Fiona Panther (University of Western Australia)

31. Catching a stellar CME in the act: the first Type II burst beyond the Sun

Joseph Callingham (ASTRON / University of Amsterdam)

07/12/2026, 11:30

AIP | Astronomy (ASTRO)

Invited talk

Coronal Mass Ejections are predicted to play an important role in planetary atmospheric erosion, especially for planets that are close to their host star. However, this conclusion remains controversial because, despite decades of searches, there has not been an unambiguous detection of a CME from a star beyond our Sun. A clear signature of a CME is a type II radio burst, which is emitted from...

101. Dynamics of thermally-driven stellar winds generated in the stellar atmosphere

David Pontin (University of Newcastle)

07/12/2026, 12:00

AIP | Astronomy (ASTRO)

Contributed Oral

Stars like the Sun exhibit winds that are driven by thermal pressure, though the mechanism that provides the thermal energy remains unresolved. The energisation process is inherently dynamic, and leaves its fingerprints in fluctuations in the wind. At the Sun, the release of hot, dense plasma from closed magnetic field regions has been proposed as an explanation for compositions in certain...

41. The Dynamic Radio Sky: Using Variability to Probe Extreme Physics

Prof. Tara Murphy (University of Sydney)

07/12/2026, 12:15

AIP | Astronomy (ASTRO)

Invited talk

Time domain radio astronomy will be revolutionised by the Square Kilometre Array. The capability to image the sky repeatedly, over many frequencies and timescales, will allow us to explore and understand dynamic phenomena in a way that has not been previously possible. These phenomena range from events at cosmological distances, such as gamma-ray bursts and fast radio bursts, to much more...

79. Periodic radio and X-ray emission from an accreting white dwarf binary

Kovi Rose (University of Sydney)

07/12/2026, 12:45

AIP | Astronomy (ASTRO)

Contributed Oral

I will present the discovery and characterisation of a novel, gravitationally-accreting white dwarf binary system, identified through optical spectroscopy and radio-wavelength observations. This system displays a short orbital period of ~1.3 hours, determined from Doppler shifts in Balmer emission lines, and exhibits unique radio emission characteristics.

We observed periodic bursts of...