Recent Talks

En 1915 Albert Einstein publica su teoría general de la relatividad y con ella predice la existencia de las llamadas ondas gravitacionales. Cien años después, dos importantísimos hitos científicos relacionados con esta predicción tienen lugar. Primero, el anuncio de la detección directa de ondas gravitacionales confirma la teoría de Einstein, marcando el comienzo de la Astronomía Gravitacional. El segundo hecho clave ha sido el éxito de la misión espacial LISA Pathfinder, satélite que ha probado la tecnología necesaria para los futuros observatorios de ondas gravitacionales en el espacio. Los continuos avances científicos y tecnológicos de las últimas décadas han permitido abrir esta nueva ventana a un universo lleno de revolucionarios descubrimientos que esperan ya ser desvelados.

Phylogenetics, a concept being widely-used in biology, is the reconstruction of evolutionary history by building trees that represent branching patterns and sequences. These trees represent shared history, and it is our contention that this approach can be employed in the analysis of Galactic history, where the shared environment in which stars form provide the basis for tree-building as a methodological tool.  In this talk I will discuss how evolutionary trees can be built with twin stars and how this gains new insights into the structure and evolution of the Milky Way. 

The standard model of cosmology has been quite successful accounting for a broad range of data - at least until the past few years. But as the quality of cosmological measurements has continued to improve, tension has grown between observations and the predictions of LCDM. In this talk, we will address several "problem" areas, and then focus on the most recent: the emergence of a rather strong non-inflationary signature in the angular correlation function of the microwave background. Inflation is critical to the internal self-consistency of the standard model. Yet after 4 decades, we still lack convincing evidence that it ever happened.

The S-class MESSIER satellite has been designed to explore the extremely low surface brightness universe at UV and optical wavelengths. The two driving science cases target the mildly- and highly non-linear regimes of structure formation to test two key predictions of the LCDM scenario: (1) the detection of the putative large number of galaxy satellites, and (2) the identification of the filaments of the cosmic web. The science requirements imply challenging instrumentation issues which have only recently been solved. The satellite will drift scan the entire sky in 6 bands covering the 200-1000 nm wavelength range to reach the unprecedented surface brightness levels of 34 mag/arcsec^2 in the optical and 37 mag/arcsec^2 in the UV. As usual when uncovering new volumes in parameter space, many important secondary science cases will also result as free by-products and will be discussed in some detail: the actual luminosity function of galaxies, the contribution and role of intracluster light, the fluctuations of the cosmological background radiation at UV and optical wavelengths, the warm molecular hydrogen content of galaxies at z=0.25, time-domain studies of supernovae and tidal disruption events, the chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium through mass loss of red giant stars and the accurate measure of the BAO scale at z=0.7 with over 30 million galaxies detected in Lyman-alpha at this redshift. It will provide the first space-based reference UV-optical photometric catalogue of the entire sky, and synergies with GAIA, EUCLID and WFIRST will also be discussed.

¿Cuáles son los primeros pasos que tenemos que dar en el diseño de una cámara para el espacio?

Nociones generales sobre las pruebas a las que se deberá someter a un equipo o instrumento diseñado para el espacio. Pinceladas de los requisitos de calidad que debe cumplir el desarrollo de un proyecto aeroespacial.

Procedimiento llevado a cabo para la calibración en Tierra y en vuelo de una cámara de observación terrestre.

Ténicas de diseño para rpoteger circuitos digitales frente a fallos provocados por radiación.

Ténicas fundamentales y soluciones basadas en super-resolución y multi-espectralidad. Análisis de los compromisos de diseño de un enlace de comunicaciones.

Introducción del subdirector del Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Carlos Martinez, en la segunda jornada del curso "Introducción a la instrumentación para satélites de observación de la Tierra".