The Arp299 puzzle. Black holes that devour stars

In January 2005, a bright flash was detected in the nucleus of the galaxy in the process of fusion Arp 299-B, which was considered a supernova explosion. However, ten years of observations at different wavelengths have allowed us to witness how the luminous region was lengthening and expanding, and to conclude that it is a jet of material expelled by the galaxy's central super-massive black hole after tearing a star.

The Hubble-Lemaître constant: is it really a constant?

Following an open debate, the International Astronomical Union recently recommended that the rate of expansion of the universe, traditionally referred to as the "Hubble Constant", should henceforth be referred to as the "Hubble-Lemaître Constant". In this session we will see why the change of designation was necessary to do justice to the work of Georges Lemaître, one of the fathers of relativistic cosmology, but also the reasons that point out that in reality it is not a constant.

Climate change in Mars

Back to Orion

Orion is the massive star formation region closest to the Sun and in consequence it has been studied in detail. I will present three recent results from the IRyA group on this region. The first one is the ultraprecise determination of the distance to Orion using VLBI observations of stars with non-thermal emission. The second result is a study of the kinematics of the stars with either termal or non-thermal emission. Finally, we will focus on the extraordinary “explosión” that seems to have taken place in the Orion BN/KL region.

Primer Plan de igualdad del IAA

El objetivo de esta charla es presentar a todo el Instituto el I Plan de Igualdad de género. Plantearé las motivaciones y necesidades de contar con un plan de igualdad en un instituto de investigación, cuando ya el CSIC está preparando su III Plan de Igualdad. Revisaré los objetivos y marco de actuación de los planes del CSIC y mi visión de cómo el nuestro se hace para complementar algunas acciones no contempladas dentro de esa estructura general.

Instrument development at the AAO

The AAO is a consortium of three Australian instrumentation groups, based at Macquarie University, University of Sydney, and the Australian National University. Collectively, the consortium has delivered hundreds of instrument projects for astronomy, for our own telescopes and internationally. We have particular expertise in fibre positioners and fibre systems, spectrographs, astro-photonics, and adaptive optics. I will give an overview of the consortium and our key projects.

Active Galactic Nuclei and their large-scale structure: an eROSITA mock catalogue

In the context of the upcoming SRG/eROSITA survey, I will present in this talk a methodology to construct mock catalogs for X-ray selected AGN samples based on dark matter only N-body simulations. With this method, we predict observed AGN magnitudes in the UV, optical and NIR bands, by adopting a set of empirical spectral energy distributions. We imprint the latest eROSITA survey strategy plan to create a high fidelity full-sky mock catalog, showing the expected distribution of X-ray AGN in right ascension, declination, redshift and flux (X-ray and optical).

Visit of the Delegation of Environment of the Junta de Andalucía at Sierra Nevada Observatory

On Thursday September 15 the Delegate of Environment of the Junta de Andalucía, Inmaculada Oria, visited the Sierra Nevada Observatory (OSN). The visit is part of a collaboration agreement between the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA) and the Provincial Delegation which began following the First Day of Sky Quality held last June.

The visit was also attended by the Mayor of Monachil, Jose Morales, Councilman Environment of the City of Monachil, Franciso Alvarez, and the Director of the Sierra Nevada National Park, Javier Sanchez.

The IAA hosts a conference on the quality of the sky

Tomorrow will be held at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), a technical conference which seeks to establish a strategy for joint action among the various regional actors involved in the protection of the sky.