Recent Talks

Dark Matter in Galaxies is an important subject of current astrophysical research. I will concentrate on spiral galaxies, and first give an overview of the subject from the standpoint of a radioastronomer with a long involvement in the subject. This includes a historical introduction and a review of some of the present-day debates. The currently popular Lambda-CDM model has problems on the scale of galaxies. In a second part I will address more specifically the problem that we still do not know how much dark matter there is in spiral galaxies, and how it is distributed. This is due to the fact that the M/L of the visible matter is poorly constrained and that there is a 'conspiracy' between the dark and the baryonic material. I will present various dynamical methods that have been proposed to constrain the dark matter mass distribution and discuss their advantages and disadvantages.

The detection and number estimates of supermassive binary black holes (SMBBHs) provide important constraints on the hierarchical models for galaxy formation and evolution. I will present two different approaches for the possible identification of SMBBHs. 1.Radio-optical studies of X-shaped radio sources:X-shaped radio galaxies are extragalactic radio sources that present two pairs of radio lobes passing symmetrically through the center of the host galaxy, giving the galaxy the X-shaped morphology seen on radio maps.This morphology can reflect either a recent merger of two supermassive black holes or the presence of a second active black hole in the galactic nucleus. This scenario is studied by determining the mass, luminosity, jet dynamic age and starburst of a sample of X-shaped sources and comparing the results to a sample of radio-loud active nuclei with similar redshift and luminosities. 2.Compact radio emission in ULX objects: Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) have luminosities exceeding 10E39 erg/s, suggesting either the presence of black holes larger than stellar mass black holes or sources apparently radiating above the Eddington limit. I will present milliarcsecond-scale radio observations of some ULXs located within optical bright galaxies, resolving their compact radio emission, and measuring its brightness temperature and spectral properties. This allows us to uncover the nature of these sources and investigate whether they are intermediate mass black holes or supermassive black holes stripped of their accretion disks in post-merger systems.

3C 279, the first quasar discovered to emit VHE gamma-rays by the MAGIC telescope in 2006, was re-observed by MAGIC in January 2007 during a major optical flare and from December 2008 to April 2009 following an alert from the Fermi space telescope on an exceptionally high gamma -ray state. The January 2007 observations resulted in a detection on January 16 with significance 5.2 sigma, corresponding to a F(> 150 GeV)(3.8±0.8) 10^-11 ph cm^-2 s^-1 while the overall data sample does not show significant signal. The December 2008 - April 2009 observations did not detect the source. We study the multi-wavelength behaviour of the source at the epochs of MAGIC observations, collecting quasi-simultaneous data at optical and X-ray frequencies and for 2009 also gamma-ray data from Fermi. We study the light curves and spectral energy distribution of the source. The spectral energy distributions of three observing epochs (including the February 2006, which has been previously published in Albert et al. 2008a) are modelled with one-zone inverse Compton models and the emission on January 16, 2007 also with two zone model and with a lepto-hadronic model. We find that the VHE gamma-ray emission detected in 2006 and 2007 challenges standard one-zone model, based on relativistic electrons in a jet scattering broad line region photons, while the other studied models fit the observed spectral energy distribution more satisfactorily.

According to Quantum Chromodynamics, which is the well established theory of strong interactions, quark and gluons are forced to live inside hadrons because of the property of confinement. However, under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure, a new phase called quark-gluon plasma is possible, where quarks and gluons became basically free. In the last years it has been possible to study this phase experimentally by using new facilities called Heavy Ion Colliders like the RHIC (Brookhaven) or the LHC (CERN).

Los habitantes del País de Hatti, contemporáneos y rivales de los egipcios del Reino Nuevo, produjeron durante varios siglos una sofisticada cultura heredera de la larga tradición anatolia y que perduraría en diversos reinos después de su caída a finales del siglo XIII a. de C. A pesar de la importancia de ciertos dioses con un claro trasfondo celeste, tales como la Diosa Solar de Arinna, hasta el presente no se habían realizado trabajos para investigar esta dimensión en su cultura. En la presente charla realizaremos un repaso a algunos de estos elementos astrales de la religión y cultura Hitita, así como presentaremos los resultados de la campaña que llevamos a cabo in situ en el verano de 2009, recientemente aceptados para su publicación en JHA. Los resultados muestran que la orientación adecuada de templos, espacios funerarios y otros monumentos era de especial relevancia a lahora de cumplir con los requisitos religiosos. En particular, noscentraremos en los monumentos de la ciudad de Hattusa, la capital Hitita, y sus alrededores.

Since June last year, the IAC is an institutional member in the third phase of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III). Many of us have already got an account in the wiki, a bunch are following closely the evolution of one or more of the four surveys, BOSS, MARVELS, SEGUE-2 and APOGEE, through the mailing lists and the teleconferences, and there are even some who are already working actively on them. All this in a period of one year since the IAC´s participation was first proposed. In this seminar, we'll make a quick summary of the activities related to SDSS at the IAC, we'll present the latest news, and will make a live demonstration on how to access DR8 data.

This lecture will address recent progress in modeling the emergence of cosmic structure at high redshifts. Also new insights gained from numerical simulations into the processes relevant for star formation are presented. Rapid magnetic field growth in galaxies and the important role of proto-stellar outflows regulating star formation up to pc scales are particularly highlighted.

In this talk I will present the first complete 12CO J=3-2 map of M81, observed as part of the Nearby Galaxies Legacy Survey. We have detected nine regions of significant CO emission located at different positions within the spiral arms, and confirmed that the global CO emission in the galaxy is low. Using a new Hα map obtained with the Isaac Newton Telescope and archival data I will discuss a series of topics including the correlation between the molecular gas and star forming regions, the CO (3-2)/(1-0) line ratio, and the amount of hydrogen produced in photo-dissociation regions near the locations where CO J=3-2 was detected.