IAUS405 LOC members - Monika Viskotová and Michal Zajaček - prepared the workshop "Black holes under the magnifying glass" for about 30 high-school students within the CzecHopes 2026 event organized on the premises of the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University on February 5-6, 2026.
During the two-hour workshop students got acquainted with the basic properties of black holes, their typical masses (and sizes), methods of detection (electromagnetically and via gravitational waves), and how hot the gas around black holes can get. The workshop was designed in an interactive way - it consisted of a short quiz about the history of black-hole research, construction of an elliptic orbit of a star orbiting the supermassive black hole, and it contained a rich graphical material. At the end of the workshop, participants were invited to take part at the public part of the IAUS405 in May in Brno.
Based on the Scientific Organizing Committee evaluation of the submitted contributions, the preliminary program of the IAU Symposium 405 was published, which can be looked through interactively at https://gc2026.muni.cz/programme, including talk abstracts. We also published the current list of posters at https://gc2026.muni.cz/programme/posters.
For IAUS405 participants we prepared a rich accompanying social program, including the Welcome cocktail, Conference dinner, sightseeing tour, and the concert full of beautiful Czech and Moravian music. In addition, participants can plan various free-time activities to enjoy Brno and its surroundings even more.
