Astronomy, like any other science, works under the system of peer-review. It means that nothing is published in a prestigious journal without having the external examination of at least one specialist in the field, a person who is not connected directly with the research described in the paper. The same system is valid for the observing proposals. Most observatories (at least the important ones) have a panel of experts which read all the submitted proposals and grade them, granting time to the best and feasible ideas. See Franck Marchis’ description about how it works with the European Southern Observatory. The goal is to try to remove subjectivity (difficult, since we are humans) and to make the best out of the available observing time.

So, now to the question formulated in the title…

At least in this occasion I have been lucky, or very good, or the Olympic gods have smiled at my team. In the same day we have received the answer from Calar Alto, La Palma (both in Spain) and Subaru (Hawaii, USA) and we have received a fair amount of nights in this telescopes, including the newest and hopefully most powerful in the optical and near-IR from the ground: the Spanish 10, GTC.
I guess next Fall I will be busy observing…

Yes, it has been worth it.

Running, I feel I am always running everywhere, trying not to miss the next step, almost at the verge of a disaster. Today, the train from Palermo to the airport broke and I almost didn’t arrive on time to catch the place. But ts departure was delayed and I was afraid I would not be able to change planes in Rome. I had to run across the terminal, to find out that the second flight was delayed. At least I know that, today, I will reach my destination: finally, home. But, in a sense, this way back home has been a kind of small Odissey, a metaphore of life.

The last six months or so have been, work-wise, to most strange in my professional career. Meetings, projects, justifications, trips, proposals, committees … one after another, without pause. Finally, it seems I have achieved, more or less, all the goals I had in mind, and most of my commitments (some of them fun) are over. So, I expect from now on to have more time for science and for my students. And I hope I will not have to go through any period like this one.

In the JENAM (European Astronomical Society Meeting), in England … plenty of wonderful results. Of course, from my point of view, the most important is the announcement by Michael Mayor of a new exoplanet, with an extremely low mass, only twice the earth value (although it depends on the inclination of the orbit).

I have a kind of déjà vu. I was in Florence 14 years ago when he announced the discovered the first exoplanet orbiting around a solar type star. It amazement how far we have gone in these few years, and the group of Prof. Mayor has played a key rôle on this very exciting area.

Link to the info in Spanish.

After a quite a hectic month, full of proposals and paperwork, I can go back to science. ¿Really?

I had my last deadline last April 10th, for the Subaru telescope. It was also the Easter week, but I work everyday on this and finishing the first version of my next book. So, I thought I would be able to go back to do real science after this date. As usual, I was wrong.

I have been busy with the justification of my annual budget for the JWST/MIRI (an instrument for the next space telescope) and with ideas for the E-ELT.

Next week I have the meeting of the European Astronomical Society, which will be held in UK, and the following I am coming back there for the JWST/MIRI consortium meeting.

All these things are fun, but it has been quite a lot since I have seen my last astrophysical data…

I have never been in a submarine, but sometimes I have the feeling I have navigated inside deep waters during long weeks.

The feeling persists and it is recurrent. Normally, it come back in March… Because is the month when, almost, everything happens… Deadline after deadline in order to get time at different observatories, new projects to get funding (from the regional government of Madrid, in this particular case), the annual justification of my research budget (with the central government), the preparation of workshops and meetings later on during this year. And, as usual, in my case, the JWST/MIRI.

All these activities are very interesting, very exciting. And very demanding. I almost do not have time for anything else. It is like along journey in a ship, like being immersed under an immense ocean, thinking whether there is enough air or, in my case, enough time to arrive to a save harbour.

“Nasir rolled over on his back, with my glasses, and began to study the stars, counting aloud first one group and then another; crying out with surprise at discovering little lights not noticed by his unaided eye. Auda set us on to talk of telescopes - of the great ones - and of how man in three hundred years had so far advanced from his first essay that now he built glasses as long as a tent, through which he counted thousands of unknown stars. ‘And the stars - what are they?’ We slipped into talk of suns beyond suns, sizes and distance beyond wit. ‘What will now happen with this knowledge?’ asked Mohammed. ‘We shall set to, and many learned and some clever men together will make glasses as more powerful than ours, as ours than Galileo’s; and yet more hundreds of astronomers will distinguish and reckon yet more thousands of now unseen stars, mapping them, and giving each one its name. When we see them all, there will be no night in heaven.’”

Fragment taken from “Seven Pillars of Wisdom“, T.E. Lawrence

“…Give me the ships, with adapted sails to the heavenly wind; there will be fearless people , even if they face the immensity. And for those descendants who in short time will venture themselves by these ways we will prepare, oh Galileo, myself a lunar astronomy and you a jovian one.” Johannes Kepler to Galileo Galilei in “Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo”

This year we celebrate, among other facts, the fourth centennial since Galileo Galilei used for the first time a rudimentary telescope to observe the sky and, doing so, to open a new universe to humankind. So, as a small homage, I would like to write his story. At least part of it, including the cost he had to pay for daring to have a different view, a different behavior …

… Certain dates would have to be erased of the calendar, are deserving of the opprobrium and the shame. One of them is the 24th of February, so close to his birthday on February 15th. On that date in the year 1616, a commission of consulting theologians of the Inquisition, censured the heliocentric theory of Copernicus and reaffirmed the Earth immobility.

Cover of “De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium” (On the movement of the celestial spheres), by Nicholas Copernicus, in the 1543 edition.

In fact the process was somehow more complicated. It began the 19 of February with the proposal of censorship of an expert belonging to the commission, which did not include an astronomer. It continued with a meeting of the Congregation of Holy Office, which started by the reprimand to Galileo by order of Pope Paulo V, carried out on the following day by Cardinal Bellarmino. At that moment, it is prescribed to Galileo that he must leave the opinion that Earth moves. On March 1sr, Congregation of the Index prohibited a series of books related to the copernicanism and its validity from a theological point. Moreover, the copernican work “De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium” (On the movement of the celestial spheres) is suspended until its “correction”. We should remember that the heliocentric theory, and the mathematical model which accompanied it, were essential to calculate in a simple and accurate way, the movements of planets, and was also were related to the calendar reform. This was probably the real reason why was not forbidden at that time. The decree was publish several days later, on March the 5th.

Cover of the edition princeps of “Sidereus nuncius” (Sidereal messenger), a short pamphlet in Latin published by Galileo in 1610, which will break down for ever the geocentric and aristotelian visions of the universe. Photo by the author, from a book preserved in the Crawford Library, Royal Observatory of Edinburgh.

The story of the tribulations of Galileo and his encounter and mix-ups with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, by all means, do not begin nor finish there. The beginning can be probably located in 1609, when Galile receives the news of the existence of a wonderful instrument, composed of lenses, which was able “to approach” the objects. With this limited information, Galileo built its first telescope during the summer of that one year. In December the 1st he already was observing the firmament with telescopes of suitable quality. And it is then when a new universe opened up for him, and also for us, intellectual inheritors of the Galilean work. Between its multiple discoveries, we can name the spots present on the surface of the Sun, the mountains of the Moon, the phases of Venus, the four main jovian satellites, the rings of Saturn (without realizing its nature), the explanation of the tides, the large stellar density within the Milky Way, the use of the telescope and the pendulum as scientific instruments, laws of dynamics, studies on the how objects fall, among others. It is indeed the discovery of the sunspots what it puts to him in direct collision with the order of the Jesuits, due to the dispute about the priority of the discovery and the meaning of this phenomenon that he maintained with father Christopher Scheiner, who insisted on the sky incorruptibility. Another dispute with another member of that religious order, in this case Horazio Grassi, was due to the nature of the comets. Moreover several intellectuals related to other religious orders (although also Galileo also found allies within some of them) will attack Galileo in an implacable way.

Several years later, on June 22nd 1633, in spite of the protection of the Dukes of Tuscan, the powerful Medici family, Galileo will be formally condemned by the Inquisition and forced to abjure, on his knees and under the threat of torture, of the Copernican theory, which was already described as heretical. The process was at the request of his supposed friend, the Pontiff Urban VIII, who had been elevated to the papal throne in 1623.

The abjuration of Galileo Galilei before Roman Inquisition, June 22nd of 1633, according to a picture of century XIX painted by Joseph-Nicholas Robert-Fleury.

The story of Galileo and prohibition of his book “Dialogue on both great systems of world”, where he clearly exposed the superiority of copernican theory which situated the Sun in the center of the universe (and therefore forced the Earth to move around it, which was against the literal interpretation of certain passages of the Bible) against the geocentric and geostationary interpretation of Claudius Ptolomy is, truly, fascinating. Galileo was able to publish the book in spite of the limitations imposed by Urban VIII during the edition process, which was completely supervised by the Roman hierarchy. As a matter of fact, they gave him, initially, the “imprimatur” (approval), the official declaration by the roman church of being free of moral or doctrinal error.

All this process is, in truth, of great complexity. It is worth of the best novel about political conspiracies in the Italian Renaissance. The antecedents are located practically a century before (with the development of the heliocentric theory by Nicholas Copernicus). It includes the procedural methods of the Inquisition, that were avoided or even they were contravened in the case of Galileo. It also contains an ideological war between those supporting him and his enemies in the academic world. And, as the perfect stage, the international politics, including the struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism and the confrontation between Spain and France for the European supremacy. In fact, it is this fight which forced the reorientation of the policy of Urban VIII. And it might as well have an influence in the pope change of opinion, so drastic, with respect to the work of Galileo. The end of the story, if it has finished, reaches the XX century (starting in 1979), with the revision of the case by a commission of experts at the suggestion of the pope John Paul II. The so called Galileo’s case seems to be filled with multiple manipulations by Roman Inquisition and by several historians, including fraud and the shameless distortion of the available evidences.

“Eppur si muove”… Probably Galileo, old and defeated, did not pronounce this phrase when leaving the room where he was forced to abjure the heliocentric theory. And nevertheless Earth moves…

In any case, Galileo Galilei is one of the greatest scientists for all times and father of the modern Physics. Thanks to him, we can, indeed, affirm “eppur si muove”.

February 6th … in few hours the possibility of requesting observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope will end. Like my team, a lot of groups have been working very hard during the last day to be able to submit proposal which will evaluate by committees of other colleagues. The most interesting and exciting (well, not always) will be approved and will get time.

Spitzer, although an important space observatory (it has produces some of the most beautiful images taken from the sky) is just another facility. From now on, essentially every other week, astronomers have deadlines in order to submit proposal to different observatories. In my case, I am planning to submit several to Calar Alto (German-Spanish), La Palma (including the new and shiny Spanish 10m GTC, one of the most powerful ground-based instrument), Subaru in Hawaii, La Silla and Paranal in Chile… It is a new cycle: new ideas, projects, proposals. However, sometimes I have the feeling that my main task is writing scientific proposal.

Storm in Algeria, across the Mediterranean, as seen from the Observatory of Calar Alto, in Southern Spain (credir F. Hormuth)

However, one an idea is accepted, when I am taking data at the telescope. When I have the opportunity and the priviledge of going out of the building and let my eyes get used to the darkness … the real miracle begins: stars and the Milky Way in their true magnificence. Or, during the sunset or the dusk, it is possible to observe amazing meteorological phenomena, such as the Green Flash and wonderful spectacles as the Sun sunks under the horizon. Or impressive storms, as in the case of the picture I am including (some text in Spanish).

As I said, a real priviledge.

I have to confess than more than once I have woken up in a hotel, without knwong exactly where I was. Although I try top minimize the trips, specially the short trips for meetings, somethings my schedule fills up so quickly that I have conflicts between different activities. As happen in July, I can have several observing runs at the same time in places located thousand kilometers apart, in different continents.

My schedule for 2009

I decided last year that I would have all my scientific and administrative material in my laptop, to be able to work anywhere. I know this is not an optimal solution, but after having different material in different computers, working under three different operative systems, I decided I had enough.

Travelling can be fun, exciting. But when the airport starts to be like a bus stop, it is a clear signal that something is going too far. I guess I miss being a PhD student or a junior postdoc, when things were much simpler.

RoPACS, one of the big collaborations I am involved, is a European network which has the goal of training PhD students in the field of the exoplanet search and characterization (by the way, we are opening 11 positions in several countries across Europe). The network is being coordinated by David Pinfield, from the Hertfordshire University. In order to achieve this aim, we are exploiting the WFCAM Transit survey, an ambitious project which has been granted several hundred nights at the UKIRT telescope over the next few years. We are monitoring a significant amount of M dwarfs in the near infrared, trying to detect subtle changes in their light curves which might be induced by the presence of planets. Since M dwarfs emit most of their energy at those wavelengths, and since relative size between the fiducial planet and the host star is larger (ie, the deeps in the light curves are more relevant), we do believe this is the best strategy to detect a rocky planet: am Earth-like body orbiting around other star.

During the last two days, I have organized the “kick-off meeting” at the “Centro de Astrobiología“, a face-to-face lively discussion where we have been able to clarify several issues and define the best startegy for the future. It has been a little bit exhausting (hotel booking, transportation, etc), but the effort has been worth it and I hope we will have interesting results soon enough.