The first week of June saw the 2025 meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA), with this year's conference taking place in Halifax, NS. Hundreds of astronomers from across Canada met to discuss the most recent discoveries in astronomy, including a large contingent from the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics!
Assistant professor Dr. Lisa Dang, the WCA's newest faculty member, was one of CASCA's invited speakers this year, and started the week with an excellent talk about her research on some of the most extreme types of exoplanets -- hot Jupiters and lava worlds -- which orbit very close to their host stars.
The schedule was packed with contributions from WCA members, with postdoctoral researchers Ian Roberts, Lammim Ahad and Ana Ennis presenting their work on galaxies, galaxy clusters, and planetary nebulae, respectively. WCA graduate student Marie-Joëlle Gingras also gave a talk about her research on the dynamics of active galactic nuclei.
It's important for astronomers to have something to discuss over a cup of coffee, so postdocs Liza Sazonova, Ashley Bemis and Roan Haggar contributed three of the nearly 100 posters that made up the CASCA poster hall. There was a particular buzz around Liza's three-dimensional poster on galaxy evolution!
The week drew to a close with WCA graduate student Cameron Morgan being awarded the CASCA Graduate Student Committee award for the best talk, for his presentation on how star formation is quenched in the Virgo galaxy cluster. Congratulations Cam!
Thank you to Saint Mary's University for hosting this year's annual meeting, we're looking forward to CASCA2026 in Montreal!
