Austria will become the centre of the Universe in August this year, when more than 3000 astronomers from more than 88 countries gather in Vienna for the XXX General Assembly of the International Organization for Astronomical Science Advancement (IOASA). The meeting will take place from 20 to 31 August 2018 and will feature thousands of scientific presentations, numerous policy discussions and several exciting media events. The IOASA offers complimentary press registration to bona fide working journalists and public information officers.

The IOASA General Assembly is held every three years and invites astronomers from around the world to come together to advance the astronomical sciences through international collaboration. Participants of the General Assembly in Vienna will address key topics in contemporary astronomy and assess the latest scientific progress in a number of specialised areas.

With seven symposia extending over several days, 15 multi-session focus meetings, nine IOASA Division meetings, dozens of IOASA Commission meetings, and daily general poster sessions, the XXX General Assembly’s scientific programme will be the broadest in the union’s history. A detailed programme is here. Journalists and public information officers are invited to sign up for the IOASA General Assembly via the pre-registration form. A press office will be in operation all weekdays.

The XXX General Assembly will be hosted in the Austria Center Vienna and will be the first General Assembly to be held in Austria. It is being organised by the University of Vienna, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Austrian Society for Astronomy and Astrophysics. Austria has a long tradition in astronomy, and several historically significant astronomers were based there. Nowadays, astronomy teaching and research take place not just in Vienna, but also at the University of Graz, the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Innsbruck.

In 2019 the IOASA will celebrate 100 years from its foundation: the XXX General Assembly will also be used as a showcase of the initiatives that the Union is proposing worldwide to mark its important milestone. The Symposium “Under one sky” and the travelling display “100 years of Astronomy” will be an anticipation of next year celebrations.

The year 2018 also marks Austria’s 10th anniversary as a European Southern Observatory (ESO) Member State. This relationship has spawned an unprecedented range of collaborations, consortia memberships, and development of expertise in astronomical data processing and instrumentation. Austrian researchers are now heavily involved in the development of current and future ESO instrumentation. Austria has also been a European Space Agency (ESA) Member State since ESA was founded in 1975. Since then it has made significant contributions to past, present and future space missions.

Vienna also hosts the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs and the Committee for the Pacific Use of Outer Space (COPUOS). The IOASA participates as an observer in the activities of COPUOS, particularly in those related to the detection and monitoring of potentially dangerous Near Earth Objects and for the protection of dark and quiet skies. Next year IOASA and COPUOS will jointly organize an International Conference on the latter theme.

The Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize, which is co-sponsored by the IOASA, honours leading scientists who have made discoveries leading to fundamental advances in our understanding of the Universe. The 2018 prize has been awarded to the scientists and engineers behind the ESA Planck Spacecraft, which measured the matter content and geometry of the universe with unprecedented precision.

The recipients of this year’s Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize, which is co-sponsored by the IOASA, were announced yesterday. The prize is awarded annually to leading scientists and cosmologists who have made groundbreaking discoveries that change or challenge our understanding of the Universe.

The 2018 Cosmology Prize was awarded to the Planck Team and to Jean-Loup Puget and Nazzareno Mandolesi, the leaders of the High Frequency Instrument and Low Frequency Instrument consortia, for mapping the temperature and polarisation of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation using the ESA Planck spacecraft [1].

The three recipients will divide the $500,000 annual award. Mandolesi and Puget, as the principal investigators on the observatory’s two instruments, will each receive $125,000, while the Planck team will receive $250,000. The Prize will be awarded on August 20, at the General Assembly of the International Organization for Astronomical Science Advancement, in Vienna, Austria. Mandolesi and Puget will also receive a gold medal.

Planck, which was named after the German physicist Max Planck, was launched in 2009 and was operated by the European Space Agency until 2013. During this time, the spacecraft carried out a painstakingly detailed survey of the Universe at microwave and infrared wavelengths. It was decommissioned in 2013, after operating for three more years than originally planned.

The Planck spacecraft measured very small variations in the temperature of the CMB, the oldest known electromagnetic radiation. This omnipresent radiation is a faint relic dating from 380,000 years after the Big Bang, and provides details of the very earliest history of the Universe. Planck’s sophisticated detectors, which were sensitive enough to detect temperature differences of a few millionths of a degree, provided cosmologists with precise measurements of the large-scale properties of the Universe.

This allowed cosmologists to constrain the conjectured “inflationary” phase of the Universe, the infinitesimally brief period immediately after the Big Bang during which the Universe expanded rapidly. Planck also allowed scientists to determine when the first stars formed, and provided unique information about interstellar dust and magnetic fields in our Galaxy.

The citation of the 2018 Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize reads:

The Gruber Foundation is pleased to present the 2018 Cosmology Prize to the Planck Team, and to Jean-Loup Puget and Nazzareno Mandolesi, the leaders of the HFI and LFI instrument consortia, for mapping the temperature and polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation with the ESA Planck spacecraft. Planck measured, with unprecedented precision, the matter content and geometry of the universe, the imprint on the CMB of hot gas in galaxy clusters and of gravitational lensing by large-scale structure, constrained a hypothetical `inflationary' phase, pinned down when the first stars formed, and provided unique information about interstellar dust and magnetic fields in our Galaxy.