Mapear el cielo (Historia y Vida, Nov 2013)
Magazine: Historia y Vida Title: “Mapear el Cielo” Pdf file: HistoriaYVida_Gaia_Nov2013.pdf Publication date: November 2013 La humanidad siempre ha trazado mapas. Mapas del mundo, de las ciudades, de las montañas, de los mares… y del cielo. Si, al caer la noche, alzamos la vista para contemplar el firmamento, es posible que atisbemos, por ejemplo, un punto lejano con una espectacular luminosidad azul. Sabemos que se trata de Eta Carinae, una estrella que brilla cuatro millones de veces más que el sol, gracias a que los astrónomos llevan siglos observando y...
read moreGaia launch date
Gaia the astrometry mission, sixth corner stone of the scientific programme of the European Space Agency including the missions Rosetta, Herschel, Planck, Lisa and BepiColombo, finally has a launch date: December 19. Gaia, which was first proposed in 1993, is expected to be launched on board a Soyuz rocket from the Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) in French Guiana in South America, to begin its mission to map more than one billion stars, creating an astronomical census and map to help scientists chart the evolution of the Milky Way galaxy. The Soyuz 2-1b rocket will...
read moreLast Successful Campaigns of the OCCASO Project
The Open Clusters Chemical Abundances from Spanish Observatories project (OCCASO, 2013-2015) has just finished successfully the second run of observations at the Mercator Telescope using the HERMES Fibre-fed echelle spectrograph in high resolution mode (R∼85000). Two more runs were observed with the NOT telescope and the high-resolution FIbre-fed Echelle Spectrograph (FIES) last April and September. Up to now we have been able to measure 45 stars in 9 clusters. Our project in collaboration with the IAC, OABo (Italy) and OCA (France) aims to determine homogeneous abundances for more...
read more“El ‘ojo gigante’ que escudriñará la galaxia” (El Mundo, 23 Oct 2013)
Newspaper: El Mundo Tittle: “El ‘ojo gigante’ que escudriñará la galaxia” Webpage: http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2012/10/23/ciencia/1351005345.html Publication date: 23 October 2013 El proyecto Gaia de la Agencia Espacial Europea (ESA) censará mil millones de estrellas en la Vía Láctea, gracias a la cámara digital más grande jamás construida para una misión espacial, con mil millones de píxeles, un ‘ojo gigante’ que escudriñará y cartografiará nuestra galaxia.”Los instrumentos de Gaia son tan precisos que, si estuviese en la Tierra, sería...
read moreThe Perseus spiral arm in the Anticenter direction
The thesis developed by Maria Monguió was just presented this November, 11/2013 The main purpose of her work is to map the radial variation of the stellar density for the young stellar population in the Galactic anticenter direction in order to understand the structure and location of the Perseus spiral arm. A Strömgren photometric survey covering 16 square degrees in the anticenter direction was carried out using the Wide Field Camera at the Isaac Newton Telescope. As a result, a main catalog of 35974 stars with all Strömgren indexes has been obtained, together with a extended one...
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