Recent Talks

In the rapidly changing world of exoplanets, a new class of planets has emerged recently: the so called Ultra-Hot Jupiters, which have no analogue in our own solar system. Characterised by their short orbits and proximity to their host star, these worlds receive thousands of times the Earth’s insolation and have effective temperatures above 2000 K, making them intriguing candidates to study the most extreme atmospheric environments. A notable feature of these high temperatures is that the transmission spectra of these planets are rich in atomic metal lines, which provide new probes into the chemistry and dynamics of their atmospheres. I will highlight what we have recently learned about Ultra-Hot Jupiter atmospheres and focus on what knowledge can be derived directly from ground-based observations via transmission spectroscopy.

Connect to the following zoom link if you want to ask questions to the speaker:

https://rediris.zoom.us/j/96593309648

Re-ionisation followed the dark ages when enough stars and galaxies had been formed that their ionising output was sufficient for the task. Population III stars and star-forming galaxies started the re-ionisation process by forming primordial bubbles of ionised gas. These bubbles grew, illuminated by galaxies with strong Lyman continuum, and merged, till the entire Universe became ionised. The epoch corresponding to red-shift 6.5 is especially interesting as we now know the Universe became re-ionised by redshift ~5.5-6. High-z Lyα emitters are perhaps the most important witnesses of the re-ionisation process. Indeed, at redshifts larger than 6, Lyα sources would be undetectable, unless they are located within sizeable bubbles of ionised gas. I will show that a proto-cluster of Lyα emitting galaxies, spectroscopically confirmed at redshift 6.5, is within one such large ionised super-bubble. The kinds of bubbles that through percolation completed the re-ionisation of the universe.

Zoom link  https://rediris.zoom.us/j/94401326592

Short Meetings on Astro Computing Knowledge (SMACK) are a series of talks, or more appropriately 'live demonstrations', presented in the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), targeting graduate students and researchers.  The main aim of the talks is to demonstrate the use and benefits of basic software tools that are commonly required for astronomical research. These talks will be showcasted at IAC Talks and recorded for easy future reference by the community.

The 1st SMACK is a brief introduction to the linux shell and the basic tools that come with it. We'll assume no previous knowledge and include a brief history of the POSIX standard.

Multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) has been proved to obtain the high-resolution images with a large field of view in solar observation. In this talk, after briefly introducing the basic principle and the development status of solar MCAO, I will give the progress of MCAO research based on the 1-m New Vacuum solar Telescope (NVST) in China. A solar MCAO experiment system had been successfully developed in 2017, and the MCAO-corrected high-resolution sunspots images were acquired. After that, a new MCAO system is being developed as an a regularly operating instrument for scientific observations of the sun for the NVST.

Se retransmitirá en directo, mediante streaming, un seminario compuesto de charlas cortas impartidas por trabajadoras del Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias de todas las áreas del centro.

In this talk I will present the current status of the Calar
Alto observatory. I will review the most important highlights published
in 2019, as well as the legacy programs and instrumental developments
ongoing at the observatory at present. Finally, I will summarize the
recent call for public surveys and new instrumentation, still open, that
will be presented in the RIA workshop to be held at IAA headquarters in
March 2020.

Mindfulness o atención plena es un estado de la mente que permite estar atento al momento presente con aceptación. Y describe también la técnica psicológica que permite alcanzar este estado. Mindfulness se asocia a una gran bienestar físico y psicológico y por eso su práctica se está extendiendo a nivel internacional y se aplica en el área de la salud, la educación y las organizaciones.
En el coloquio sentaremos las bases teóricas de mindfulness, realizaremos algunas prácticas básicas y analizaremos los mecanismos de acción y la utilidad de mindfulness en el día a día.

Ground based observations of exoplanets supporting space
missions are as important as the missions themselves. The exoplanet group
at the Czech Academy of Sciences (AI CAS), which has been formed in 2016,
uses the Ondřejov Echelle Spectrograph (OES) for exoplanet observations.
The OES is installed at 2-m Perek Telescope (CZ) and observations are
mainly focused on Kepler/K2 and TESS targets. I will present here latest
results from OES as well as activities of the exoplanetary group at AI CAS
together with future plans. As an Erasmus+ project student staying at IAC
I will also mention preliminary results of secondary eclipse observations
with four-colour MuSCAT2 photometer installed at 1.52-m Telescopio Carlos
Sanchéz of Teide Observatory.

HARISSA is the acronym of ESO/VLT/SPHERE large program of high angular-resolution imaging survey of asteroids. The program was granted by 152hours of observations for five semesters, between 2017 and 2019. Its objective was the survey of a representative sample of large asteroids (diameter larger than 100km) for ~35 objects throughout their rotation. The presentation will point some results of highlighted science produced and published of this program.

GroundBIRD is a millimeter-wave telescope to observe the polarization patterns of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The telescope scans at a high rotation speed (20 revolutions per minute), and observes ~40% full sky with suppressed atmospheric 1/f noise. High-sensitivity detector arrays of MKIDs (microwave kinetic inductance detectors) are utilized to obtain the fast time response of >1kHz. The cryogenic system keeps the detectors at 250mK for over 24 hours with 20rpm rotation. The data acquisition system is implemented using field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), which realizes flexibly changing frequencies, multiplexing, powers, and also sampling rate for each MKID array. Communication between the detector and other angular readout systems was also established for timing synchronization where the sub-millisecond resolution with 120°/sec rotation is required. The telescope was developed in Japan, and installed at Teide Observatory in September 2019. We have demonstrated that all systems are working correctly by observing the moon.