Mario Joao Monteiro is a theorist of the highest order. An expert in solar and stellar modelling, his current scientific interests are centred on the seismic analysis of the internal structure and evolution of solar-type stars. He aims to determine the fundamental stellar parameters necessary for a better understanding of how stars evolve from the pre-main sequence to the most advanced evolutionary stages. Since 2006 he has been the Director of the Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto (CAUP). He plays a distinguished part in the Kepler mission, in charge of the modelling of solar

Thierry Appourchaux is a mathematician by training and an expert in statistics. His experience in instrumentation and data analysis in Helio- and Asteroseismology is outstanding: he heads the group dedicated to data analysis for the CoRoT (COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits) mission and the group studying the characterization of the acoustic modes of solar-type stars for the Kepler mission. He also leads the Asteroseismology analysis team within the PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) consortium.A specialist in the characterization of the acoustic modes of the Sun

Jorgen Christensen-Dalsgaard, professor of Helio- and Asteroseismology at Aarhus University (The Netherlands), seems to be interested in all aspects of these two disciplines. Among other activities, he heads SONG (Stellar Observations Network Group), an international network of terrestrial telescopes for continuous observation of the stars, and he directs the KASC ( Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium), which studies asteroseismological data gathered by Kepler. Another of his achievements is to have persuaded NASA to include Asteroseismology as part of the Kepler mission. This year marks

Donald Wayne Kurtz manages to simplify the complexity of science through his explanations. Born in the United States, he spent twenty-five years in Cape Town (South Africa), where he had initially gone for a year's postdoctoral experience. For the past ten years he has been a professor at the University of Central Lancashire (United Kingdom). He is also a member of the governing committee of KASC (Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium), in which hundreds of astronomers study thousands of stars observed by the Kepler mission. In the course of his working life he has spent more than 2000

Tomorrow, Friday 19th November at 7.00 pm, at the Museo de la Ciencia y el Cosmos in La Laguna, Professor Donald Kurtz of the University of Central Lancashire (United Kingdom) will give a public lecture on `The Songs of the Stars: The Real Music of the Spheres´. The lecture will be in English with simultaneous interpretation into Spanish. We humans are intensely visual creatures: ‘seeing is believing.’ But there are other ways to know the world and universe. For many species of bats ‘hearing is believing.’ 2500 years ago the Pythagoreans believed in a celestial ‘music of the spheres,’ an

Tim Bedding is an excellent observer of oscillations in solar-type stars and red giants. Among his achievements may be counted certain very interesting and widely applied empirical relationships now being used in the CoRoT (COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits) and Kepler missions in order to obtain rapidly global parameters of stars using seismology. Currently, one of his new "work-horses" is studying the“mixed modes”: how they can help to extract information on the evolutionary state of a star. He has also worked on optical interferometry (measuring angular sizes of stars). He is at