BESSY@HZB User Meeting

With the series of annual user meetings, we bring together our user community to intensify scientific exchange and stimulating new collaborations. The meetings will provide an overview of the many exciting and inspiring research results obtained at our facility in the past year and will emphasize on future developments in particular on BESSY III. Plenary talks, discussions, a public lecture, the market place of innovation and a poster session will provide vast possibilities of information and discussion. The bestowals of the 'Prizes for Young Scientists' donated by the Freundeskreis Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin e.V. (FHZB) are traditional highlights of the user meetings.

• Programme
• Country of Honour 2025 - Niger
• Public Lecture - ESA’s NewAthena X-Ray Space Observatory
• Poster Session
• Vendor Exhibition
• Travel Information

Programme

The 17th BESSY@HZB User Meeting includes the following highlights:

• The Synchrotron Session, the Public Lecture and the Bestowal of Prizes will take place on Wednesday, 3 December
• Science Highlights will be presented on Wednesday, 3 December and Thursday, 4 December
• The dedicated Young Scientist Session will be held on Thursday, 4 December
• The user meeting will be concluded with a (Christmas-) Market Place of Innovations and a Poster Session on Thursday afternoon
• Finally, all registered participants are invited to join the "green" buffet on Thursday evening
• One-off event - a dedicated "Energy Day" on Friday, 5 December

PROGRAMME BESSY@HZB User Meeting 2025 (3 to 4 December)
PROGRAMME "Energy Day" (5 December)

Country of Honour 2025 - Niger

To make international integration and cooperation more visible, each BESSY@HZB User Meeting will be accompanied by a country of honour. This year’s country of honour is Niger and we are pleased to invite eight scientists from Niger who will participate in the user meeting.

This invitation is directed to scientists at the early stage of their scientific career. We will organise an interesting programme with laboratory tours and scientific lectures. HZB will reimburse travel expenses and provides accommodation in our guesthouse from November 30 (Sunday) to December 06 (Saturday) free of charge.

*** The registration is closed ***

Public Lecture - ESA’s NewAthena X-Ray Space Observatory

Image: ©ESA

We are pleased to welcome you to a Public Lecture at the Bunsen Hall of the WISTA Event Center given by Frédéric Safa and Marcos Bavdaz (European Space Agency, Directorate of Science, Noordwijk, Netherlands) on ESA’s NewAthena X-Ray Space Observatory:

NewAthena is planned for launch in the late 2030s and will be the most powerful X-Ray telescope in space for observing the “hot and energetic universe” through the 0.2 to 10 keV X-Ray spectral window, to address a wide range of fundamental questions of modern astrophysics on e.g.  black holes and galaxy evolution, neutron star physics, and large-scale structures in the Universe.

NewAthena builds on the success of previous observatories, such as XMM-Newton (ESA), Chandra (NASA) and more recently XRISM (JAXA). The NewAthena telescope is using modular Silicon Pore Optics (SPO), a new technology developed by ESA with cosine (NL), and will provide unprecedented combination of high spatial resolution (HEW 5 to 9 arcsec), large collecting area (> 1m² @ 1 keV) and large field of view (40 x 40 arcmin²). The two focal plane instruments, X-IFU (led by IRAP/CNES, Toulouse) and WFI (led by MPE, Garching), will provide high-resolution non-dispersive imaging spectroscopy using ultra-cooled Transition Edge Sensors (0.1 K) and wide-field imaging capability using Active Pixel Sensors. Following an overview of the scientific objectives, the talk will present the recent project evolution and major progress achieved on SPO over the last decade, allowing to start the spacecraft development in 2027.

For the alignment of the required about 600 mirror modules for the SPO, two dedicated beamlines (X-ray Parallel Beam Facility 3 and 4) will be installed in the PTB-laboratory at BESSY II in addition to XPBF 1 and 2, operated there already since 2005 and 2016, respectively. The talk will address the critical importance, for space science missions, of the system optimization and technology predevelopments for reaching the optimum balance between performance, affordability and implementation feasibility.

Poster Session

The poster session is an excellent opportunity to present and discuss your latest research results. All posters will be on display in the BESSY II experimental hall until next year's user meeting.

In case you need to print your poster on site, please go HERE.

Vendor Exhibition

An important part of our user meeting is the vendor exhibition, which is running alongside the meeting. We provide your organisation with the great opportunity to present your products to a large number of high impact customers. Each year we expect some 300 participants; surely a significant number for presenting your company, and a good chance to get in contact with new customers using synchrotron radiation and performing experiments at BESSY II. For more detailed information on how to join the vendor exhibtion please go to the vendor exhibition webpage.

Travel Information

The BESSY@HZB User Meeting will be held at the WISTA Event Center and at BESSY II at Science Park Adlershof.