IAU Symposia

IAUS 402: Massive stars across redshifts in the era of JWST and large surveys

Start date/time

September 15, 2025

End date/time

September 19, 2025

Place

Ensenada, Baja California,
Mexico

Abstract

Massive stars are key to solving numerous cosmic puzzles because they are factories of ionising radiation, metals, cosmic rays, dust, neutron stars, black holes, and gravitational waves. However, many competing factors are thought to influence their observed properties and challenge our understanding of how these stars evolve and affect what the present-day Universe looks like. Since the IAU Symposium 361 in 2022, revolutionary high-redshift discoveries have been made, such as galaxies and quasars that are too massive for their age and possible signatures of Pop III stars at z=10. Large surveys in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds and complementary high-quality observations have provided detailed constraints for theories of stellar and galaxy evolution. This symposium will enable experts in the theory and observations of massive stars from diverse communities to gauge the progress that has been made so far and identify areas that still need improving. It will also enable the maximisation of the return of empirical datasets and models and underpin the interpretation of observed high-redshift phenomena.