Recent Talks

Galaxy clusters are the most massive gravitationally collapsed structures in the universe, and they have important cosmological and astrophysical applications. Measurements of the radial distribution of galaxies in clusters show how galaxies trace the underlying dark matter distribution, and provide constraints on the physics related to their evolution in these environments. I will present measurements on the radial distribution of galaxies in two cluster samples, which span about 8 Gyrs of lookback time. By matching local galaxy clusters to their progenitors at high redshift, we study how clusters assemble their stellar mass content. Interestingly, this suggests that the central part of the stellar mass distribution of local galaxy clusters is already in place at redshift, and any further growth seems to happen in an inside-out fashion. I will put these findings into context by comparing them to the results from dark matter simulations. I will also focus on the abundance and spatial distribution of ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs, which have the luminosities of dwarfs but sizes of giant galaxies) in clusters. These mysterious galaxies have been found to be surprisingly abundant in local clusters, but their origin remains puzzling. I will discuss what we can learn about the properties of UDGs by studying their abundance as a function of halo mass, and their radial distribution in these haloes.

Approximately 10 per cent of massive OBA main-sequence (MS) and pre-MS stars harbour strong, large-scale magnetic fields. At the same time, there is a dearth of magnetic stars in close binaries. A process generating strong magnetic fields only in some stars must be responsible and several channels for the formation of magnetic massive stars have been proposed. In this talk, I will present recent results on the origin and evolution of such strong surface magnetic fields. Regarding the origin, mergers of MS and pre-MS stars have been proposed to form magnetic stars and I will highlight a method to probe this hypothesis observationally. Applying this new method to two magnetic massive stars, we find that they are indeed consistent with being MS merger products. Utilising a large sample of magnetic and non-magnetic OB stars, I will show that there is a dearth of evolved magnetic stars that suggests that magnetic fields disappear over time. I will argue that this is most likely caused by decaying magnetic fields.

An exciting series of changes are taking place at the venerable WHT and INT on La Palma. WEAVE, the next generation multi-fibre spectrograph is being completed for the WHT prime focus. Once built, it will carry out massive surveys of stars, the Milky Way, galaxy evolution and cosmology. At the INT, the HARPS3 high-resolution stabilized spectrograph is being built. It will provide the ING communities with a world-class exoplanet research tool. This talk will address the observing opportunities brought by these two instruments, their development calendars, and ING’s plans to retain additional instrumentation for the open time. I will describe how the telescopes will be operated, both in the survey time and the open, TAC time.

In coincidence with the announcement of the call for proposal of the Spanish night CAT for semester 2017A, we present the new web page OOCC. This is the new astronomer portal of the IAC, and it targets the Spanish community with all the necessary information to access and observe with any telescope at both Observatorios Astronomicos de Canarias, that is the Observatorio del Teide and the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos. The new portal, developed by the IAC Telescope Operation Group in agreement with the Presidents of both the night and the solar CATs, supersedes the old www.iac.es/cat and www.iac.es/telescopes pages. In this talk we will present the most important aspects and possibilities of the portal.

While ultraluminous supersoft X-ray sources (ULSs) bear features for intermediate mass black holes or very massive white dwarfs possibly close to Chandrasekhar mass limit, our recent discovery of processing relativistic baryonic jets from a prototype ULS in M81 demonstrate that they are not IMBHs or WDs, but black holes accreting at super-Eddington rates. This discovery strengthens the recent ideas that ULXs are stellar black holes with supercritical accretion, as demonstrated in the case of M101 ULX-1, and provides a vivid manifestation of what happens when a black hole devours too much, that is, it will generate thick disk winds and fire out sub-relativistic baryonic jets along the funnel as predicted by recent numerical simulations. 

The National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) was officially founded in April 2001 through the merger of several unites and was headquartered in Beijing, which was formerly called the Beijing Astronomical Observatory established in 1958. Aiming at the forefront of astronomical science, NAOC conducts cutting-edge astronomical studies, operates major national facilities and develops state-of-the-art technological innovations in China.  NAOC is one of the most important institutes for Astronomy in　Chinese Academy of Sciences　(CAS)  system, as well as in the whole country. I will briefly introduce NAOC, including the facilities, research and the international collaborations.

 In this talk I will present the our work on an exotic group  
of evolved objects: post-AGB and post-RGB stars and the excellent  
constraints they provide for single and binary star evolution and  
nucleosynthesis. These objects have also revealed new evolutionary  
channels and AGB nucleosynthesis which is vital for understanding the  
complex chemical evolution of our Galaxy as well as external galaxies.

We propose ground-based monitoring system for atmospheric water vapor based on wide-range spectra at 20 – 30 GHz and 50 – 60 GHz ranges. It  observes in these microwave range and estimates the thermodynamic environments in the atmosphere. These information can determine short-term forecasting and now casting of severe storms. Our system can catch rapid increase of water vapor before clouds generation. We employ cold receiver system to achieve a system temperature below the atmospheric radiations. We will present overview of the system, including status of development, and results of long-term monitoring in outside.