On April 24, 2026, I gave a 12-minute oral presentation, "Photometric Characterization of Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2025 FA22: Rotation Period, Shape, and Taxonomy," at the 32nd Young Scientists' Conference on Astronomy and Space Physics hosted online by Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (April 20–25, 2026). The conference brings together bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. students alongside early-career researchers from across the world. The full YSC-32 programme booklet is available here.
In my talk I shared how I observed the newly discovered potentially hazardous asteroid 2025 FA22 during its close approach to Earth on 2025 September 18 UTC, when it passed within roughly two lunar distances. Key results I presented included: a well-defined synodic rotation period of 13.075 ± 0.002 hours, derived from R-band photometry; a peak-to-peak lightcurve amplitude of 0.62 mag, with a double-peaked structure pointing to an elongated body; and multi-filter BVRI photometry yielding moderately red colours consistent with an S-complex taxonomic classification.
These findings have since been peer-reviewed and published in the Minor Planet Bulletin, 53(2), 2026, and the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 120(2), April 2026.
This was my second time participating in the conference. At the 31st edition in April 2025, I presented "Constraining Mass, Orbital Period, and Eccentricity of Non-Transiting Exoplanets Using Machine Learning and MCMC-Driven N-Body Simulations". It was a hybrid framework that uses transit timing variations (TTVs), 120,000+ N-body simulations, a Random Forest machine-learning step to build priors, and a nested MCMC analysis to indirectly detect and characterize hidden, low-mass, long-period exoplanets, validated on the Kepler-18c system. A recording of that talk is available on YouTube.
Returning a year later with new asteroid characterization work, alongside the same community of young researchers, has been one of the most rewarding parts of doing open science.