We are at the AG-Tagung in Bremen

The bottom part of a towel with a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram printed on it

Our puzzler prize for this year (well, its lower part): The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram according to Gaia on a wonderfully soft towel.

After two years of “virtual” meetings, this year the venerable “Herbsttagung der Astronomischen Gesellschaft”, the meeting of Germany's Astronomical Society, is back. Almost as before Corona, it is bringing astronomers together, this year in Bremen (previously on this blog: 2018 in Stuttgart).

Bowing to the “German“ in GAVO, this is an opportunity for us to connect to the (or, rather, our) community, both with a splinter meeting and with our traditional booth, at which you can pick up various edifying printed matter, a laminated ADQL reference card, and lots of VO wisdom (i.e., chat with our friendly booth staff).

And you can solve our puzzler, a little problem that has an elegant VO-based solution (previous puzzlers). As is tradition, solving the puzzler will not only give you intellectual satisfaction and perhaps even insights into the VO, it will also give you a chance to win an item that is heavenly fluffy. The article photo shows this year's puzzler prize, and if this piques your desire, absolutely feel free to hand in solutions even if you are not in Bremen[1].

Update 2022-09-15: This year's prize went to Bonn. So, there's no point to hand in solutions any more – rather, have a look at how we thought the problem should be approached.

[1]We've had an actual award (the AG-RAS Carolin Herschel medal) being handed out virtually yesterday, so in case we really draw a remote entry, I am very confident that we can work something out for handing over the prize.

Zitiert in: HEALPix Maps: In General and in Gaia