The Polish Astronomical Society honored astronomers and popularizers

Professors Marcin Kubiak, Michał Szymański, and Andrzej Udalski were honored by the Polish Astronomical Society with the B. Paczyński Medal for their scientific achievements. Stefan Janta, Adam Michalec, and the Polaris – OPP Association were awarded the W. Zonn Medal for their work in popularizing astronomy.

The Bohdan Paczyński Medal is the highest distinction awarded by the Polish Astronomical Society (PTA) for scientific achievements. Bohdan Paczyński (1940–2007) was one of the most distinguished contemporary Polish astronomers. The medal is awarded in his honor "for outstanding achievements in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics." The first edition of the award was in 2013.

Previously, one prize was awarded per edition, but in 2025, there will be three laureates: Marcin Kubiak, Michał Szymański, and Andrzej Udalski. All of these astronomers are associated with the University of Warsaw Astronomical Observatory and the OGLE project. There is also a further connection between them: Professor Kubiak supervised the doctoral dissertations of Michał Szymański and Andrzej Udalski.

Professor Marcin Kubiak (born 1949) is one of the initiators of the OGLE observational project, which monitors the brightness of millions of stars. In 1991-1992, he led discussions with Professor Bohdan Paczyński and the Las Campanas Observatory on the design of the OGLE project, and later directed grants for the construction of a 1.3-meter telescope in Chile. The OGLE project was launched in 1992, and the telescope began operation in 1996. Professor Kubiak co-discovered the first gravitational microlensing events by OGLE and used them to study dark matter, as well as the first successful use of the transit method and the gravitational microlensing method to discover extrasolar planets.

Professor Michał Szymański (born 1959) made a key contribution to the development of technology and software for analyzing the vast amounts of information collected by OGLE. He designed photometric databases and procedure libraries. Currently, the OGLE database contains over a trillion photometric measurements for two billion stars, as well as one million sky images. Together with Professor Udalski, he created a system for the rapid detection of gravitational microlensing phenomena (Early Warning System, or EWS) to continuously adapt the observation strategy to better understand the phenomenon. Subsequently, data from the EWS system became publicly available via the internet, allowing other research teams to join in the observations. Szymański also created web interfaces for identifying stars in OGLE-observed fields, browsing variable stars from the OGLE database, and determining interstellar extinction toward the center of the Milky Way, as well as the data acquisition and reduction system and the telescope control system. Professor Szymański is a co-author of all major OGLE discoveries.

Professor Andrzej Udalski (born 1957) is the leader of the OGLE group. He is a world-class specialist in the construction of astronomical instruments. He led the construction of the Warsaw Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile in 1995-96. In 2001, he independently built a wide-field, eight-detector CCD mosaic camera with over 65 million pixels. In 2010, he launched a next-generation mosaic camera composed of 32 CCD detectors (256 million pixels), which remains one of the largest instruments of its kind in the world. In 1993, Professor Udalski discovered the first gravitational microlensing event in the OGLE project's first phase database, and shortly thereafter, the first-ever microlensing event caused by a binary object. To date, he has personally detected over 20,000 gravitational microlensing events. His research also covers extrasolar planets (including the first planet discovered using the transit method), variable stars, and interstellar extinction.

The Polish Astronomical Society also awarded the Włodzimierz Zonn Prize and Medal "for popularizing knowledge about the Universe." These are among the oldest Polish awards for popularizing science (first issued in 1983). The award's patron is astronomer Włodzimierz Zonn (1905-1975).

This year, three awards were also presented. They were received by Stefan Janta, Adam Michalec, and the Polaris – OPP Association.

Stefan Janta (born 1960) has dedicated his professional life to the Silesian Planetarium, where he worked in various positions for 45 years. He is currently the institution's director. In recent years, he led the modernization of the planetarium, transforming it into a modern center for the popularization of science. Currently, the institution operates under the name Planetarium – Silesian Science Park, and in the first two years after the modernization, nearly one million people visited it. Janta was also involved in the Astronomy Olympiad: he authored the problems, served as a juror, and above all, was the organizer, ensuring the funding and implementation of the competition. He also organized the International Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA) twice.

Adam Michalec was a member of the Jagiellonian University Astronomical Observatory in Kraków, where he was involved in astronomy popularization initiatives for several decades. He also collaborates with the Youth Astronomical Observatory in Niepołomice. The laureate is active in the media, publishing popular science articles about celestial phenomena for years and even hosting summer radio programs. For approximately 25 years, he has regularly conducted Foucault pendulum demonstrations in a Kraków church.

The Polaris Association – OPP was founded in 1994. Its headquarters are located in the village of Sopotnia Wielka, where the organization has built an astronomical observatory (at School Complex No. 4 in Sopotnia Wielka) and a unique site in Poland: the Youth Space Station (YSS), a 1:1 scale model of the interior of the Destiny module on the International Space Station (ISS). Activities for young people are conducted there. The Polaris Association – OPP has implemented dozens of projects, including Astroevents, Picnic with Astronomy, and Bringing the Stars to Children. It also undertakes activities related to dark sky protection, i.e., combating excessive artificial light pollution. On a local scale, it successfully convinced the local authorities to replace their lighting with night-sky-friendly ones. In turn, on a nationwide scale, it conducts educational activities in society and among politicians, and, for example, supported the creation of the Jizera Dark Sky Park (established in 2009), and since 2004 it has been running the "Dark Sky" project.

The Polish Astronomical Society also awarded a prize to young scientists (up to 35 years of age). The judging criterion is outstanding individual scientific achievements in astronomy. The prize was first awarded in 1959 and is the only PTA award that offers both prestige and financial benefits.

This year's winner of the PTA Young Scientists Award is Dr. Łukasz Tychoniec. The jury recognized his scientific achievements in research on star formation and protoplanetary disks using data from leading ground-based and space-based telescopes. He is the co-author of 65 peer-reviewed, multi-author scientific papers, including seven in which he is the first author. Dr. Tychoniec graduated in astronomy from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, received his doctorate from Leiden University (the Netherlands), and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the University of Leiden.

The Polish Astronomical Society is an association of professional astronomers. It has existed for over a hundred years, having been founded in 1923. It is a scientific society, but it also popularizes astronomy, including publishing the journal "Urania – Postępy Astronomii," the online portal www.urania.edu.pl, and the television series "Astronarium." (PAP)

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