December 2025 Research Papers and News

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Edwin Rod

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Dec 28, 2025, 3:30:21 PM12/28/25

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December 2025 Research Papers and News

Hi every one

Merry Christmas and happy new year,

The Central Star Party is looking good this year so do you best to make it along if you’re able to. I won’t be able to make it along as I will be in the South Island. I plan to make it along to Stardate in March in the Wairarapa. I’m also doing some thinking about the total solar eclipse in 2028 with a trip down south a possibility. It must have been a super busy month as only a few links and articles noted down from the past month too. A new job has been keeping me rather busy too.

CENTRAL STAR PARTY 2026 (Thursday 15 - Monday 19 January)

Central Star Party, hosted by the Hawkes Bay Astronomical Society, is an annual star party held in the central North Island for the benefit of the astronomical community of the North Island of New Zealand. The goal of the organisers is to provide a fun social family-friendly astronomical gathering laced with talks, activities and telescope viewings. Full details at https://censtar.party

The tenth Central Star Party will be held from Thursday 15 to Monday19 January 2026 at the Tuki Tuki Camp site in the Hawkes Bay. This is the site of previous star parties.

There is plenty of tent sites and limited bunks and caravan sites. There is a kitchen facility, toilets and showers available.

As well as many varied astronomy presentations and telescope observing, there will be an Astro Quiz, raffle, movies, sausage sizzle, and a fish/burger & chip dinner. The full programme is available at https://censtar.party/?page_id=3557 including a downloadable pdf.

Bookings are now available at https://censtar.party/?post_type=product

#nziauastronomy NZ IAU Astronomy Outreach IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach

STARDATE 2026(Friday 13 – Saturday the 14 March)

STARDATE26 is confirmed at both Star Safari and the Rangatahi Hub with a sneak preview for one of the speakers – building and restoring old telescopes.

Tom Love

Tom is an amateur astronomer who started out with the local astronomical society in Dunedin and later worked as the first observer on the MOA microlensing project at Mount John in the 1990s. Returning to astronomy in recent years he works with amateurs and professionals to observe a range of objects spectroscopically, and is involved with research projects on pulsating stars, novae and eclipsing binary systems. He is a part time research student in astronomy at the University of Southern Queensland

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Research papers

The atmospheric composition of TOI-270 d

https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.13830

From gas to ice giants A unified mechanism for equatorial jets

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads8899

The Photochemical Plausibility of Warm Exo-Titans Orbiting M Dwarf Stars

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae1026

Titan’s strong tidal dissipation precludes a subsurface ocean

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09818-x

Onset of summer aridification and the decline of Homo floresiensis at Liang Bua 61,000 years ago

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02961-3