News 2026

25.03.2026 Congratulations to Ellie McClure (our PhD student) on her first publication! 

Lauren McClure, Suzana Silva, Gary Verth, Istvan Ballai and Viktor Fedun, “Solar Vortex Detection With Velocity Field Normalisation: Eliminating False Positives”, 

The Astrophysical Journal, 2026

16-18.03.2026 Dr Alina Donea (Monash University, Australia) visited PDG and presented a seminar titled “Stability of Large Sunspots.” She also had a number of useful discussions with PDG members as well as the SunbYte team. 

01-06.03.2026 This week, Malcolm Druett (Team Lead) and Foad Hanassi-Savari (PDG PhD student) attended the ISSI meeting ‘Next-Generation Solar Flare Modelling: Bridging the Multi-Dimensional Gap.’

21.02.2026 National Astronomical Meeting 2026 session "Modern methods for the analysis of dynamical plasma processes in the solar atmosphere" has been organised by the members of PDG (Suzana Silva, Lauren McClure, Viktor Fedun) in collaboration with Eamon Scullion, Kostas Tziotziou and Ivan Milic. Feel free to share the link with your community, for example, on social media or via email newsletters. Deadline 2nd April 2026.

10.02.2026 White Paper (Helio), UKRA STFC published, Silva, SSA., Fedun, V., Verth, G., Ballai, I., Scullion, E., Druett, M., Tziotziou, K., Pietrow, A., Yadav, N., Dakanalis, I., Khomenko, E., Kuniyoshi, H., Turkay, S., Pistarini, MK., Erdelyi, R., Schiavo, LACA., Observing solar vortices with existing and future instrumentation. Solar Physics International Network for Swirls (SPINS), 2026, arxiv

09-13.02.2026 Viktor Fedun participated in USO Golden Jubilee Conference, Udaipur, India  

04.01.2026 Congratulations to Malcolm Druett, with his successful application to the ISSI. Project: "Next-Generation Solar Flare Modelling: Bridging the multi-dimensional gap", ISSI Team led by Joel Allred & Malcolm Druett