Scientific seminars exposed by scientists and technologists of the IAA and the many centers and research institutions who visit us. They show the intense scientific exchange, they are held at 12:30 every Thursday. Seminars are broadcasted live at IAA - CSIC Seminars Live.
For further information, please contact seminars (at) iaa.es.
25/11/2021 - 12:30
SO. Webloquia: AYA: projects and human resources in grants managed by the Spanish State Research Agency This presentation will review data and results of the national calls for projects and human resources managed by the AYA team in the AEI: research projects (PGC and Challenges), acquisition of scientific-technical equipment, proof of concept projects and strategic projects; and human resources, predoctoral hiring FPI, Juan de la Cierva training, Juan de la Cierva incorporation, Ramón y Cajal and R+D+I technical staff. Dra. Inmaculada Dominguez |
23/11/2021 - 12:30
Search for MIlli-LEnses (SMILE) to discriminate between dark matter models Projects aimed at characterising dark matter properties make use of very different approaches. One such approach is to look for strong gravitational lens systems. Gravitational lensed images with angular separation on milliarcsecond scales probe gravitational lens systems where the lens is a compact object with mass in the range 10^6-10^9 solar masses, i.e a supermassive compact object (SMCO). This mass range is particularly critical for the... Dra. Carolina Casadio |
18/11/2021 - 12:30
SO Webloquio: MOSAIC: the multi-object spectrograph for ELT MOSAIC will be the Multi-Object spectrograph for the ELT telescope. First light for this instrument is foreseen for 2031. MOSAIC is driven by scientific cases that include the study of the first galaxies in the Universe, the evolution of the large scale structure, resolved stellar populations beyond the Local Group, and the formation of exo-planets in different environments, among others. The instrumental concept includes visible spectrographs (... Dr Lidia Tasca |
11/11/2021 - 12:30
SO Webloquio: Stellar winds and their effects on exoplanets As the wind outflows from a star, it permeates the interplanetary medium, interacting with any planet it encounters. In this talk I will review some recent works on winds of low-mass stars and discuss the impact stellar winds can have on surrounding exoplanets. Compared to the physical interactions known to take place between the solar wind and the solar system planets, the interaction between stellar winds and exoplanets can be significantly... Dra Aline Vidotto |
04/11/2021 - 12:30
Identification and characterisation of emission line galaxies with J-PAS The Javalambre-Physics of the Accelerating Universe Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS) is expected to map thousands of square degrees of the northern sky with 56 narrow band filters (spectral resolution of R around 60) in the upcoming years. This resolution allows to study emission line galaxies (ELG) with equivalent widths of a few armstrongs. Meanwhile the Pathfinder J-PAS camera observed 1 deg^2 with the same photometric system than J-PAS, named... Gines Martinez Solaeche |
28/10/2021 - 12:30
Seen the Unseen in Planetary Nebulae with High-dispersion Integral Field Spectroscopic Observations Planetary nebulae (PNe), the short-lived progeny of low- and intermediate-mass stars, may embed structures with varying kinematical, physical and chemical properties that disclose the rich variety of processes occurring during their formation. These structures hide in direct images, projected against the bright nebular emission, but the advent of high-dispersion integral field spectroscopic (HD IFS) observations provide the means to... Dr. Martín Guerrero |
21/10/2021 - 12:30
Unveiling the dynamical stage of galaxy clusters through the intracluster light The intracluster light (ICL) is the most unexplored component of galaxy clusters. It is defined as a low surface brightness, extended emission composed by stars that are bound by the potential of the cluster but do not belong to any galaxy in particular. Simulations predict that minor and major mergers can mainly drive the formation of ICL, specially for z Dra. Yolanda Jimenez-Teja |
14/10/2021 - 12:30
The miniJPAS survey: the galaxy populations in the miniJPAS cluster mJPC2470-1771 Galaxy clusters are one of the largest structures in the Universe. Due to the interaction among the galaxy members, they are a great laboratory to study the role of the environment in galaxy evolution. J-PAS survey will soon start to scan thousands of square degrees in the sky, and with its large great field of view (4.2 square degrees) and filter system (56 narrowband filters and 4 broadband filters in the optical spectral range) will provide... Julio Rodriguez Martin |
07/10/2021 - 12:30
X-ray binary accretion states in AGN? Sensing the accretion disc of supermassive black holes with mid-IR nebular lines Accretion states, which are universally observed in stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries, are also anticipated in active galactic nuclei (AGN). This is the case at low luminosities, when the jet-corona coupling dominates the energy output in both populations. Previous attempts to extend this framework to a wider AGN population have been extremely challenging due to heavy hydrogen absorption of the accretion disc continuum and starlight... Dr Juan Antonio Fernández Ontiveros |
16/09/2021 - 12:30
Precision cosmology: now what? The standard cosmological model (the LCDM model) has been established and its parameters are now measured with unprecedented precision. This model successfully describes observations from widely different epochs of the Universe, from primordial nucleosynthesis all the way to the present day. However, there is a big difference between modelling and understanding. The next decade will see the era of large surveys; a large coordinated effort of... Dra. Licia Verde |
09/09/2021 - 17:00
SO Webloquio: A new look at our star: the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope The Sun represents a template for much of our understanding of the workings of a "cool" star, and its proximity allows us to observe exquisite details at its surface, with current facilities routinely reaching resolutions of few hundreds of km on the solar disk. Yet, many questions still linger, in particular concerning the actual mechanism(s) that create and maintain a hot outer atmosphere (chromosphere, transition region and corona) as well as... Dr. Gianna Cauzzi |
02/09/2021 - 15:00
The Lucy mission: exploring the unexplored Lucy is planned to launch in 2021 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle, after which it will gain two gravity assists from Earth; one in 2022, and one in 2024. In 2025, it will fly by the inner main- belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson, which was named after the discoverer of the Lucy hominid fossil. In 2027, it will arrive at the L4 Trojan cloud (the Greek camp of asteroids that orbits about 60° ahead of Jupiter), where it will... Dr. Adriana Ocampo |
22/07/2021 - 12:30
Revealing cosmic magnetism with the Square Kilometre Array and its pathfinders Magnetism is an enigmatic but crucial element of our Universe. The structure and strength of magnetic fields are important for a full understanding of astrophysics over a tremendous range of scales: from stellar systems, to star forming regions, the properties and evolution of individual galaxies, galaxy groups and clusters, and even as a major element of the Cosmic Web. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) promises to deliver a revolutionary view... Dr. George Heald |
08/07/2021 - 12:30
SO Colloquium: TeV Halos and their connection to the Leptonic Cosmic Ray flux measured at the Earth The origin and propagation of cosmic rays (CRs) is one of the most important questions in astroparticle physics nowadays. CRs generated by known sources also serve as background to those putatively generated by more exotic phenomena such as dark matter. Apart from the known electrons of primary origin and positrons of secondary one, pulsars and sources powered by them are one of the main candidates to contribute to the total amount of CR... Dr. Rubén López-Coto |
01/07/2021 - 12:30
SO Colloquium: Interstellar planetesimals: 1I/Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov Extensive surveys of extrasolar planets and of circumstellar disks around nearby stars show that planets and dust-producing planetesimals, similar to the asteroids, Kuiper belt objects and comets in our solar system, are ubiquitous around others stars. The planetesimal population of the young solar system was very numerous initially but the majority of the objects ended up ejected due to gravitational perturbations with the planets and other... Dra. Amaya Moro-Martín |
24/06/2021 - 12:30
SO Webloquio: Asteroid sample return: A laboratory perspective The new generation of sample return missions from small bodies is delivering to us fresh witnesses from the early Solar System. In this context, laboratory studies play a double role: on one hand, in-depth laboratory analysis of retrieved samples using state-of-the-art techniques give us an unprecedentedly detailed look at the formation and evolution of organic materials in asteroids; on the other hand, in the laboratory we can perform... Dr. Rosario Brunetto |
17/06/2021 - 12:30
SO Webloquio: Star-formation and accretion in galaxies from near to far: the LeMMINGs and eMERGE e-MERLIN legacy programmes Radio emission provides a uniquely powerful and unobscured probe of the two key physical processes underway in, and powering, galaxies and their evolution: Accretion on to their central SMBH, and star-formation processes. To explore these processes, and their role in galaxy evolution, we require very high resolution (sub-arcsecond or better), sensitive imaging at radio wavelengths across large samples of galaxies in both the local and distant... Dr. Rob Beswick |
10/06/2021 - 12:30
SO Webloquio: Auroral Radio Emission in stars and exoplanetary systems In recent years, an interesting type of coherent radio emission has been detected in a wide variety of stars across the HR diagram, from hot magnetic A-B MS stars to Ultra Cool dwarfs: the Auroral Radio Emission (ARE), previously observed by spacecrafts in the magnetosphere of planets of the Solar System. Very different objects are showing the same phenomenon. What do they have in common? The first star with ARE was CU Virginis, an early type... Dr. Corrado Trigilio |
08/06/2021 - 16:00
K-band interferometric imaging of the M-type Mira star ‘R Car’ The final stage of low to intermediate-mass stars, also known as the asymptotic giant branch (AGB), presents circumstellar envelopes (CSE); however the mechanisms that lead to the formation of these structures, at least in M-type AGBs, are still not well understood. In order to grasp the characteristics of the CSE, it has been found that the CO molecule plays an important role due to its stability against dissociation, making it a tracer of the... M.Sc. Abel Rosales-Guzmán |
27/05/2021 - 17:00
SO Webloquio: A Spanish in Boulder The opportunity to lead the US National Solar Observatory (managed by AURA) since 2013 has allowed me to understand the differences in how R... Dr. Valentin Martínez Pillet |
20/05/2021 - 12:30
SO WebLoquio: Regularly-spaced 8 micron cores as tracers of the earliest stages of star formation in the spiral arms of nearby galaxies Archival Spitzer Space Telescope images of most nearby spiral galaxies show prominent 8 micron emission cores when viewed with an unsharp mask technique. These cores have the IR colors of young star-forming regions, typically a million years old, behind several tens of magnitudes of optical extinction. They are usually invisible in optical images, and yet the sum of their masses divided by their likely age is comparable to the total star... Dr. Bruce Elmegreen |
13/05/2021 - 12:30
SO Webloquio: The HIRES/ELT consortium, instrument and science We present the results from the phase A study of ELT-HIRES, an optical-infrared, high-resolution spectrograph for ELT, which has just been completed by a consortium of 30 institutes from 12 countries forming a team of about 200 scientists and engineers. The top science cases of ELT-HIRES will be the detection of life signatures from exoplanet atmospheres, tests on the stability of Nature's fundamental couplings, the direct detection of the... Dr. Alessandro Marconi |
11/05/2021 - 12:30
Is the Bremer Deep Field Ionised at z=7? The talk will show that the population of star forming galaxies in the Bremer Deep Field (BDF) has formed two large ionised bubbles. The sources in the BDF have been completed with a set of expected, though not detected, low luminosity sources at z ~ 7. We have estimated the number of ionising photons produced per second by the different star forming galaxies in the BDF and have compared it with the number that would be required to reionise... Jose Miguel Rodriguez Espinosa |
06/05/2021 - 12:30
SO Webloquio: Nuclear star clusters I review the current knowledge about nuclear star clusters (NSCs), and the spectacularly dense and massive assemblies of stars found at the centers of most galaxies. Understanding the formation, growth, and ultimate fate of NSCs is crucial for a complete picture of galaxy evolution. There is a clear transition mass in galaxies of ∼ 10^9 Msol where the characteristics of NSCs change. I argue that at lower masses, NSCs are formed primarily from... Dr. Nadine Neumayer |
04/05/2021 - 12:30
SO Web-Colloquia: Thematic area 9 of the CSIC’s new White Book: Understanding the basic components of the Universe, its structure and evolution CSIC is about to publish a White Book to define its scientific strategy for the coming decades. The White Book contains chapters on 14 different thematic areas. One of the main goals of this exercise is to increase collaboration between research groups and institutes of the CSIC. Particular value is set on inter- and cross-disciplinary work. Each thematic area defines a set of “challenges”, key scientific questions for the coming decade(s) in... Dr. María José Costa and Dr. Rainer Schödel |
29/04/2021 - 12:30
Extreme Blazars Blazars are jetted active Galactic Nuclei with the jet axis oriented close to the line of sight of the observer. Non-thermal emission processes in the jet cover the whole electromagnetic spectrum from radio wavelengths to TeV gamma rays, with a characteristic double-humped Spectral Energy Distribution (SED). Relativistic amplification effects on the observed fluxes make their jets ideal candidates for detection at any wavelength. A physically... Dr. Giacomo Bonnoli |
27/04/2021 - 12:30
SO Webloquio: Chaos and Instabilities in Planetary Systems The aim of this talk is to discuss recent results on the estimation of instability times through Shannon entropy and its application to planetary systems. We will analyze the complex relation between chaos and orbital instability, and how each is able to provide important information about the dynamical evolution of the system. Finally, we will analyze how different well known planetary systems These concepts will then be applied to several... Dr Cristian Beauge |
22/04/2021 - 12:30
Gas-poor clusters: what kind of beasts are they? The known variety of galaxy clusters is constantly increasing with our progress in understanding the severity of selection effects on observational samples and with obvious implications on cosmology and cluster physics. In the talk, after a general introduction on galaxy clusters and a reminder on selection effects, I present perhaps the first X-ray unbiased sample of clusters with known masses and X-ray follow-up, its more variegate nature... Dr. Stefano Andreon |
15/04/2021 - 12:30
Unveiling the low surface brightness Universe From the beginning of time, humankind has wondered what lies behind the darkness of the night sky. From the pre-telescope era to the present, our ability to see the lowest surface brightness details in the sky has improved by a factor of one million. In this talk, I describe how our vision of the sky has changed over time and how the recent developments in ultra deep imaging have speed up our capacity to discover new objects and structures in... Dr. Ignacio Trujillo |
08/04/2021 - 12:30
On the effects of Initial Mass function on the galactic chemical enrichment: the role of Pair Instability Supernovae We built new sets of chemical yields from massive and very massive stars up to Mi ~ 350 Msun, by combining the wind ejecta extracted from our hydrostatic stellar evolution models with explosion ejecta from the literature. Using a simple chemical evolution code we analyse the effects of adopting different yield tables by comparing predictions against observations of stars in the solar vicinity. Our study indicates that PISN played a significant... Dr. Sabyasachi Goswami |
06/04/2021 - 13:30
SO Webloquio: James Webb Space Telescope Capabilities for Planet and Exoplanet Observations JWST, scheduled for launch in October, will bring a new generation of instruments, infrared detectors, and a passively cooled 6.5 m primary mirror to space-based astronomy. I will discuss its imaging and spectroscopic modes, which cover wavelengths from 0.6 - 28.5 microns, and the observatory's moving-target tracking, and coronagraphic and time-series modes for direct or transit observations of exoplanets. I will show some statistics for the... Dr. John Stansberry |
30/03/2021 - 12:30
SO Webloquio: Star-forming Complexes in Local Mergers and High Redshift Galaxies Disk galaxies at high redshift contain star-forming complexes, or clumps, whose masses and sizes far exceed those of clumps in local non-interacting galaxies. However, our recent Hubble Space Telescope observations reveal that local merging galaxies can form massive clumps like those at high z, with the same range of physical size, surface density, age, and star formation rate. These similarities, combined with the loss at high redshift of low... Dr. Debra Elmegreen |
25/03/2021 - 12:30
SO Webloquio: Searching for the formation mechanisms of brown dwarfs New generation of Submillimeter facilities in the North of Chile, like the APEX antenna and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), offers for the first time the possibility for studying the formation of stars, brown dwarfs, and planets with unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution in the millimeter/submillimeter regime. The formation of Brown Dwarfs (BDs) is a debated topic of research. The most widely discussed... Dr. Itziar de Gregorio Monsalvo |
18/03/2021 - 12:30
SO Webloquio: Polarimetry in the planetary sciences The past few decades have been characterized by the rapid development of astronomical polarimetry that has resulted from new polarimetric instrumentation, new techniques and new theories. Such advances have aided the exploitation of polarimetry in areas ranging from solar system bodies to exoplanets and allowed the development of completely new fields of polarimetric exploration such as cometary nuclei, transneptunian objects, protoplanetary and... Dr. Ricardo Gil-Hutton |
11/03/2021 - 12:30
Optical polarization of radio-quiet active galactic nuclei and its repercussion within the changing-look scenario The core of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) remains under the resolution limit of the vast majority of current telescopes. However, polarimetry provide us with information of those unresolved regions, which would be inaccessible in natural light, such as the presence of dust, magnetic fields or scattering regions. This talk will be focused on the optical polarization properties of radio-quiet AGN and its relation with the geometry of the scattering... Dr. Beatriz Agis González |
04/03/2021 - 12:30
SO Webloquio: Multiple stellar populations in globular clusters: Properties, origin, open questions Globular clusters (GCs) are fascinating objects nearly as old as the Universe that provide insight on a large variety of astrophysical and cosmological processes. However, their formation and their early dynamical evolution are far from being understood. In particular, the classical paradigm describing GCs as large systems of coeval stars formed out of chemically homogeneous material has been definitively swept away by recent high-precision... Dr. Corinne Charbonnel |
25/02/2021 - 12:30
SO Web-Colloquia: The exoplanet revolution The wealth and diversity of planetary systems that have now been detected modified our perspective on planet formation as a whole and more specifically our place in the Univers. It also present an opportunity of historical perspectives and an irresistible call to look for signs of life on these new worlds as a way to explore our own origins. I will introduce the audience with the challenges and recent progresses in this new field of research and... Dr Didier Queloz |
18/02/2021 - 12:30
SO Web-Colloquia: The Search for Advanced Extraterrestrial Civilisations via Anomalies in Astronomical Survey Data Energy-intensive civilisations are likely to have a significant impact on both their local and extended environments – we already see evidence for this here on Earth. Advanced technical civilisations may reveal themselves to other civilisations by introducing anomalous signals into astronomical data. Artificial radio signals are perhaps the best known example but there are also many other possibilities e.g. excess infra-red emission due to waste... Dr. Mike Garrett |
11/02/2021 - 12:30
SO Web-Colloquia: The influence of the star-forming environment on planetary systems Planet formation occurs at the same time as star formation, and so the environments in which stars are born are also the birthplaces of planetary systems. Star forming regions are very dense, meaning that encounters between stars and planetary systems are common. Furthermore, the intense UV radiations fields from intermediate and massive stars can truncate, or destroy protoplanetary discs. In this talk, I will describe the detrimental effects of... Dr. Richard Parker |
04/02/2021 - 12:30
PHANGS-Halpha : A narrow-band survey of nearby star-forming galaxies observed with ALMA This work collects a representative sample of star-forming galaxies as part of a major effort the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) collaboration has been making to build surveys with matched cloud-scale resolutions. Observations resolved at 50–150 pc are necessary to isolate individual Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) and HII regions to probe different phases of star formation from cold gas to stellar clusters. In this... Dr. Alessandro Razza |
28/01/2021 - 18:00
SO Web-Colloquia: Vera C. Rubin Observatory: A Big Data Machine for the 21st Century Vera C. Rubin Observatory and its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) boasts an 8.4-m diameter mirror, a camera the size of a bus, and a 3.2-gigapixel detector. It will image the entire southern sky from Chile every few nights beginning in 2023, and enable astrophysics on all scales, from near-Earth asteroids to cosmic acceleration. With nightly data volumes around 20 TB and a final data release of 15 PB, LSST is ushering in a new paradigm... Dr. Meredith Rawls |
21/01/2021 - 12:30
SO Web-Colloquia: Osiris-Rex: results on a mission to understand planetary systems In September 2016, the NASA OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida. That was the beginning of an amazing journey to reach near-Earth asteroid Bennu, collect a sample of material from its surface, and bring it back to Earth in 2023. The so-called “Touch-And-Go” maneuver or TAG, took place on October 20, 2020 and the sample collector head has been safely placed into the Sample Return... Dra. Julia de León |
14/01/2021 - 18:00
SO Web-Colloquia: The Blanco DECam Bulge Survey The Blanco Dark Energy Camera (DECam) Bulge survey is a Vera Rubin Observatory (LSST) pathfinder imaging survey, spanning ∼ 200 sq. deg. of the Southern Galactic bulge, −2◦ Dr. Michael Rich |
12/01/2021 - 12:30
SO Web-Colloquia: Primordial black holes, gravitational waves and dark matter More than twenty years ago, we predicted that massive primordial black holes (PBH) would form via the gravitational collapse of radiation and matter associated with high peaks in the spectrum of curvature fluctuations, and that they could constitute all of the dark matter (DM) today. In 2015, we predicted the clustering and broad mass distribution of PBH, which peaks at several Msun, and whose high-mass tails could be responsible for the seeds... Dr. Juan García-Bellido |
18/12/2020 - 12:30
SO Webloquia: ESO: supporting European leadership in ground-based astronomy ESO is de facto the lead world-wide organisation in building and operating most powerful ground-based astronomical observatories. The success of the organisation relies on the support of its member states and the cooperation with the community, among other key factors. Over 1000 refereed papers are published every year using data from ESO facilities, with an increasingly larger fraction of these data coming from the archive. Among these... Prof. Xavier Barcons |
17/12/2020 - 12:30
SO Web-Colloquia: On the formation of stellar clusters In this presentation, I will show how the analysis of the spatial distribution of young stars (YSO) and its comparison to the core population can reveal stellar formation episodes in star forming regions, and help us understand the fragmentation process. I will focus in particular on two very different regions: the relatively massive cluster NGC2264 and the Taurus association. Our recent study of the clump and YSO populations in NGC 2264... Dra. Estelle Moraux |
10/12/2020 - 12:30
SO Web-Colloquia: Stellar population gradients and kinematics of ETGs as revealed by MaNGA In this talk I will summarise the findings presented in a series of four papers dedicated to the study of early type galaxies (ETGs) with integral field spectroscopy (IFU) from the MaNGA survey. The formation channels and mass assembly of ETGs is still a matter of debate in current galaxy evolution models. The combined analysis of galaxy kinematics and stellar population gradients (age, metallicity, alpha-enhancement, initial mass function -IMF... Dra. Helena Domínguez Sánchez |
03/12/2020 - 12:30
From direct imaging to gravitational waves: tracing the life of gas giant exoplanets In two decades, the field of exoplanet science has undergone nothing short of a revolution. With such a variety of planetary systems detected, the next step in exoplanet research is to characterise the properties of these systems. In this talk I will focus on “life and adventures” of gas giant exoplanets, and present how future space missions such as JWST, ARIEL and LISA will help us understand the nature, formation and evolutionary history of... Dr. Camilla Danielski |
19/11/2020 - 12:30
SO Web-Colloquia: Flaring on the Sun at all scales The Sun shows activity across a wide range of size and energy scales. We shall take a journey from the smallest scale events to the largest energy releases in the solar system. The energy release is due to the magnetic fields on the Sun and how they interact. Using EUV/UV spectroscopy different layers of the solar atmosphere can be probed in order to understand the physical processes that occur. The EUV imaging spectrometer onboard the Hinode... Dr. Louise Harra |
12/11/2020 - 12:30
SO web.Colloquio: GRAVITY+, all Sky, High Contrast, Milli-Arcsecond Optical Interferometric Imaging and Spectroscopy GRAVITY and the VLTI have transformed high angular resolution astronomy with groundbreaking results on the Galactic Center, active galactic nuclei, and exoplanets. The GRAVITY+ project will soon boost optical interferometry to the next level, opening up the extragalactic sky for milli-arcsecond resolution interferometric imaging, giving access to targets as faint as K = 22 mag, and providing ever higher contrast for the observation of... Dr. Frank Eisenhauer |