Recent Talks

The search for extrasolar planets is one of the fastest-growing fields of astronomy. This rapid growth was both made possible by the development of instrumentation and motivated it, creating a virtuous cycle that impacted positively several fields of research.

In this talk I will present the latest planet-hunting spectrograph ESPRESSO, installed at ESO's VLT. Targeting a radial velocity precision of 10 cm/s, ESPRESSO has the declared goal of detecting an Earth-mass planet inside the habitable zone of a main-sequence dwarf star. I will discuss the first results, ongoing campaigns, and reveal a bit of what the future holds for us.

La gestión de documentos es una tarea compleja que implica múltiples cuestiones, especialmente en proyectos como la definición y creación de un telescopio.  Una correcta gestión documental requiere entre otras cuestiones:

• Ser fuente única de verdad: Los documentos deben gestionarse desde un punto central que actúe como fuente única de verdad permitiendo la localización y actualización de los mismos.
• Permitir búsquedas ágiles, simples y eficaces: Aunque el volumen de documentos sea elevado las búsquedas deben mantenerse ágiles y sencillas permitiendo localizar los documento en base a sus características o a la información que contienen.
• Facilitar la coherencia de formato: Los documentos creados en un proyecto deben mantener un formato y esquema coherente mediante la utilización de plantillas.
• Agilizar la creación de documentos: La solución debe permitir la creación de nuevos documentos de forma sencilla realizando de forma automatizada tantas tareas como sea posible (codificación, pre-formateo del documento,...).
• Gestión bibliográfica: los documentos requieren de un mecanismo de codificación que permita la identificación de los mismos.
• Permitir versionado de documentos: Los documentos evolucionan a lo largo de su ciclo de vida dando lugar a versiones que deben ser almacenadas e identificadas.

Las plataformas de gestión documental existentes "out of the box" no cubren el 100%  de estos requisitos. Sin embargo, ofrecen mecanismos de extensión que permiten ampliar sus capacidades. Desde la oficina de proyecto del EST hemos desarrollado una herramienta para la gestión de los documentos del proyecto,  a partir de soluciones libres como Alfresco o Carbone.io, que cubre todas estas necesidades.

The majority of massive stars are born in close binary systems with orbital periods of a few days. At some point during their core-hydrogen burning phase, both members of these close binaries inevitably overflow their Roche lobes simultaneously and get bound by a common equipotential surface. The characteristics of this `contact phase’ will determine the fate of the binary system: whether the stars will merge on the main sequence or evolve further towards becoming potential gravitational-wave progenitors. Although data is available for several of these massive contact binaries in the Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way, there has not been a dedicated study of these systems so far. In this talk, I will present the first set of detailed binary models covering a wide range of initial masses (20-80 Msun) and initial periods (0.6-2 days), focusing especially on the properties of the contact phase. We find that our models can approximately reproduce the period-mass ratio trend of the observed binaries although for the higher masses of our grid, our model predictions do not match with what is observed. We also find that those binary models which are in contact over nuclear timescales evolve towards equal masses before ultimately merging on the main sequence. This first study of massive contact binaries has allowed us to gain insights into the physics of massive contact systems and also provide reasonable predictions for the final fate of close massive binary stars.

Durante este seminario se hará un recorrido sobre la instrumentación dentro del proyecto QUIJOTE, desde de los instrumentos ya existentes y su problemática hasta el estado actual de los instrumentos de nueva generación y los posibles desarrollos a futuro.

In this talk, I will start by briefly presenting the Institut d'Optique Graduate School and the Laboratoire Charles Fabry, where I conduct my research. Then I will explain the principle of adaptive optics and discuss some issues related to the control of AO systems. This will lead to the general ideas behind high-performance control. In particular, I will explain why high-performance control can outperform the standard integrator. Some results of on-sky experiments will be shown, and I will conclude the talk by presenting our PhD students working through research collaborations.

Al objeto de incrementar la cobertura de cielo proporcionada por el sistema de óptica adaptativa de GTC, durante los últimos 4 años se ha estado trabajando en la incorporación de un sistema de estrella guía láser de Sodio. A través de esta charla se repasará el estado actual del proyecto enfatizando aquellos aspectos relacionados con el sistema óptico de lanzamiento de la estrella guía. 

In two previous talks we covered the basics of Git (http://iactalks.iac.es/talks/view/1426) and some intermediate concepts (http://iactalks.iac.es/talks/view/1428). In this one we will focus on more advanced features that can make your Git experience much more productive and efficient.

First we will focus on a very common collaboration "procedure", which we didn't have time to cover in any detail in the "Intermediate Git" talk, namely "Pull requests". 

Next, since most of your work with Git will be on local repositories, we will see some more advanced commands and features, such as pull requests, rebase, reset, hunks, reflog, stash and blame.

While this series on Git doesn't cover everything there is to Git, it does cover almost all you'll need to become a regular Git user.

Globular clusters (GCs) are fascinating objects nearly as old as the Universe that provide insight on a large variety of astrophysical and cosmological processes. However, their formation and their early and long-term evolution are far from being understood. In particular, the classical paradigm describing GCs as large systems of coeval stars formed out of chemically homogeneous material has been definitively swept away by recent high-precision spectroscopic and deep photometric observations. These data have provided undisputed evidence that GCs host multiple stellar populations, with very peculiar chemical properties. In this talk, I will review the properties of these multiple populations, before presenting the different scenarios that have been proposed to describe their formation. I will focus on the (many) current theoretical issues and open questions. 

This talk will give an overview of the resources for scientific computing at the IAC. The network, los burros, and LaPalma will be described, together with the basics for using them and practical examples. 

Speakers: Ana Esteban, Carlos Allende, Isaac Alonso and Juan Carlos Trelles (IAC)

HORUS (High ResolUtion Spectrograph) es un espectrógrafo de alta resolución, instrumento visitante en GTC y disponible para la comunicad científica desde prinicipios de 2019. Instalado en la plataforma Nasmyth B, detrás de OSIRIS, comparte foco con él. En esta charla se describe su software de control, resaltando la implementación realizada para ser un instrumento visitante de GTC y cómo se ha resuelto el problema del apuntado de un objeto.