Instrumentation

Just arrived from London from a one-day meeting of the MIRI consortium, I cannot avoid looking back with pride at our achievements, in this longer than 10 years challenge. The Mid-Infrared Instrument  (MIRI) is one of the four instruments which will fly on the James Webb   Space Telescope, the next big observatory NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency  (CSA) will put in orbit. This will happen in 2018, but a lot of work has to be done before then (the integration of the telescope and its instruments and additional verifications). These three organizations started to think... read more ❯

Amazing experience! With my student Jorge Lillo, I have been observing Saturn with the 2.2m telescope and Astralux, a lucky imaging camara capable of delivering images with resolution almost similar to those of the Hubble Space Telescope. If you do not beleive, have a look... read more ❯

After many moths and a lot of work .... (and this is one of the reasons why I was not active writing posts, or in science) .... We have an agreement! Calar Alto Observatory (Almería, Southern Spain) will continue it scientific operations up to the end of 2018. I am attaching the press release. On December 2nd 2010, the German Max Planck Society (MPG) and Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) have signed an agreement in order to operate the Calar Alto Observatory at the German-Spanish Astronomical Centre during the period 2014-2018. The German-Spanish Astronomical Centre (CAHA) is a joint venture of the... read more ❯