IACTalks format

There are three types of Astronomy and Astrophysics talks at the IAC: regular seminars, colloquia and breaking news and they all take place in the IAC's lecture hall. Our goal is to leave ample time for audience participation to discuss ideas and results. Therefore we urge speakers to keep to the time limit established for each type of talk.

Seminars: Informal Seminars (more specific or technical) are held each week on Tuesday at 12:30pm and Formal Seminars (more general, for a wider audience) on Thursdays at 10:30pm, and both have a duration of maximum 45 mins with 15 mins for questions. Anyone visiting the IAC can request to give an astronomy-related talk. So if you are an astronomer visiting or collaborating with someone at the IAC, or just passing by on your way to the Observatories and you would like to give a talk on your research activities, please contact the Seminar Committee.

Colloquia: they are held once a month on Thursday at 10:30am and have a duration of approximately 50 minutes with 10 minutes for questions. Colloquia are traditionally focused on astrophysics, with some input from other branches of physics. Speakers are invited directly by the Head of the Research Division and usually stay a few days at the IAC to establish contacts with local researchers. Nevertheless, there is great interest in the IAC in general scientific knowledge, as demonstrated by the fact that some of our researchers are involved in multidisciplinary research projects. For this reason we also have a programme of "Extraordinary Colloquia" as a platform for researchers of prestige from different scientific disciplines. "Extraordinary" colloquium speakers are selected by the Colloquium Committee and are invited directly by the Director of the IAC.

Breaking News: they have a duration of 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions and are about outstanding scientific advances made by IAC researchers. They are chosen and offered by the Seminar Committee and are based on scientific articles that have either already been published in high-prestige scientific research journals or are currently in the press.

Webcast

IAC talks are broadcast over the internet and can be watched either live or in archived form after the event using flowplayer. We capture a direct video feed of the slides as they appear on the screen, while a fixed camera films the speaker during the presentation. Both videos appear on the webcast. 

All presentations use our digital projectors, which are connected to a laptop. The speaker can use either the laptop provided (running Microsoft Windows) or their own laptop. However, we request that they set the screen resolution to 1024x768 pixels at 60Hz, so that the slides are recorded at the highest quality.

Lecture Hall

The lecture hall has a capacity of 54 persons and is equipped with a state-of-the-art audio and visual system and a high-speed Wi-Fi connection. The audio system consists of a wireless head-worn microphone for the conference speaker and a wireless hand-held microphone for the audience's questions. The visual system consists of two digital projectors that project the slides onto two screens with dimensions 1.5x2.1m via a VGA connection to the laptop. We also provide a digital air-mouse, so the pointer can be seen in the webcast.