Jun 22, 2023 | News
22/06/2023 – The emerging era of Big Data is demanding a transformation in the way science is done via a growing push to make scientific research more accessible, a movement known as 'Open Science'. To explore what this means in practice for researchers, the first SKA Open Science School took place in Granada, Spain, from 8-10 May 2023, bringing together 80 participants from 14 countries.
The IAA-CSIC Severo Ochoa Open Science school at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia was organised as a fully hybrid meeting,
with around 50% of its participants attending online. Credit: IAA-CSIC
The hybrid school was endorsed by the SKA Regional Centre partner training programme and co-organised with the SKAO under the IAA-CSIC Severo Ochoa Programme.
Participants ranged from graduate students looking for tips on making their thesis work reproducible (making tools and techniques public so that others – and even the original researchers themselves – can achieve the same results later), to the already Open Science-savvy wanting to learn practical tools. Instructors discussed transitions in science practices with accompanying challenges, and presented practical solutions, including hands-on demos. They covered topics on how to make projects/code portable throughout new versions of software, how to best use containers and science platforms, virtual observatories, setting up citizen science projects, licenses, and more.
Discussions continued between sessions on how to change habits that give quick, publishable results (the “publish-or-perish” mentality) and instead invest the time needed for long-term open and reproducible science, including how Open Science work can be appreciated by employers. As Prof. Eva Mendez of Charles III University of Madrid (UC3M) asked: “Are we prepared for a new research evaluation?”
SKAO Scientist Dr Philippa Hartley shared the new SKAO statement on Open Science, including its mission and what Open Science will do for the SKA, and the IAA’s Dr Lourdes Verdes-Montenegro, coordinator of the Spanish participation in the SKA, noted that “large scientific infrastructures have an ethical role and a practical need in Open Science”.
Sessions from the Open Science school are publicly available
on the school webpage.
May 17, 2023 | News
17/05/2023 – These bursts, which show a similar luminosity in almost all cases, are used to measure distances in the universe or to study dark energy. The study, in which the Institute de Astrophysics de Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) participates, shows that the explosion occurred in a double star system in which a white dwarf stole material from its solar-type companion. El trabajo, en el que participa el Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), muestra que la explosión se produjo en un sistema doble de estrellas en el que una enana blanca robaba material de su compañera, de tipo solar.
Type Ia supernovae are produced when a white dwarf, the "corpse" of a Sun-like star, absorbs material from a companion star and reaches a critical mass, equivalent to 1.4 solar masses, triggering an explosion whose luminosity will, given its origin, be similar in almost all cases. This uniformity made Type Ia supernovae the ideal objects for measuring distances in the Universe, but the origin and nature of the progenitor system was unknown. Now, the first radio observation of a type Ia supernova confirms that it comes from a double star system consisting of a white dwarf and a solar-type star. The results are published in the journal Nature.
"When we saw signs of a strong interaction with the companion star material in supernova SN2020eyj, we tried to observe the explosion in radio, something that had been attempted without success for decades", explains Erik Kool, a researcher at Stockholm University and lead author of the paper.
Type Ia supernovae always contain a white dwarf, which receives material from its companion. However, it was not known whether this companion was a white dwarf or a Sun-like star, something that radio imaging could reveal.
“This first radio detection of a type Ia supernova is a milestone that has allowed us to demonstrate that the exploded white dwarf was accompanied by a normal, non-degenerate star before the explosion", says Javier Moldón, a researcher at the IAA-CSIC who participated in the discovery. In addition, with these observations we can estimate the mass and geometry of the material surrounding the supernova, which allows us to better understand what the system was like before the explosion.
Artist's conception of the system that produced the supernova, in which a white dwarf star absorbs material from its companion star. Source: Adam Makarenko/W. M. Keck Observatory.
This work, whose contribution in radio data was led by the IAA-CSIC, has confirmed that the material expelled in the supernova explosion collided, after travelling sixty days, with the material surrounding the system, composed mostly of helium, which indicates that the companion star was not a white dwarf. Furthermore, models predicted that the radio emission, if present, would take many months to be detectable, and indeed the science team had to wait a year and a half to detect the supernova's radio counterpart.
“The unusual light curve of SN 2020eyj, the infrared emission, the detection of helium emission lines and the unprecedented radio detection make this supernova unique, a treasure of information with implications for multiple fields of research", says Miguel Pérez Torres, an IAA-CSIC researcher participating in the study. “Studying more similar systems will allow us to better understand the origin of these standard candles and the chemical evolution of galaxies”.
"Now that we have shown that radio observations can provide direct and unique information to understand this type of supernovae, it opens a path to study these systems with the new generation of radio instruments, such as the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) in the future", concludes Javier Moldón (IAA-CSIC).
The result has been possible thanks to e-MERLIN, an array of very high angular resolution radio telescopes, and the analysis of the data has been carried out from the Spanish prototype of the SKA Regional Centre (SPSRC) of the IAA-CSIC, which is supported by the Severo Ochoa project of the IAA and which facilitates the processing of data from SKAO pathfinders, such as e-MERLIN.
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Apr 5, 2023 | News
05/04/2023 – The Spanish contribution to the project, which amounts to 41.4 million euros until 2030, will allow Spanish companies to participate in contracts of high technological value for the construction of this scientific infrastructure. The Institute de Astrophysics de Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) is responsible for the technical coordination of the Spanish participation in the project.
The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday the accession of Spain as a full member of the SKA Observatory (SKAO), an intergovernmental organisation that is building two complementary world-class radiotelescopes that will constitute one of the largest and most ambitious scientific infrastructures on the planet.
The initial construction phase of the SKAO telescopes, covering the period from 2021 to 2030, will cost a total of 2,022 million euros. Spain will contribute a total of 41.4 million euros to this phase of the project, of which 7.9 million euros have already been paid between 2021 and 2022 (5.1 million euros from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan). In 2023, €2.5 million from the national budget is foreseen.
The formalisation of Spain's incorporation into the SKAO as a full member now allows Spanish companies to participate in the contracts for the construction of the two radiotelescopes, thanks to the principle of return that applies in this international organisation.
The participation of Spanish companies in at least five SKAO construction contracts is currently guaranteed. Spain will be responsible, for example, for the manufacture of the sub-reflectors (secondary mirrors) for the parabolic antennas and the production of the equipment for the time synchronisation of the radiotelescope receivers.
Spanish industry will thus increase its expertise in the many cutting-edge technologies and big data techniques that are indispensable for the operation of the SKAO and that are being developed specifically for this unique project.
Moreover, thanks to this adhesion, Spanish scientists will be able to carry out pioneering radio astronomical observations at the front line, which are destined to lead to transformational discoveries in the study of the universe.
"We are really grateful for the support of our SKAO colleagues over the years. It has been amazing to have reached this point, and we have thoroughly enjoyed the journey to get there working together with the Ministry, the CDTI and the astronomy community. Now we can move forward with even more challenging and exciting activities as part of the SKAO", declare Lourdes Verdes-Montenegro (IAA-CSIC), coordinator of the Spanish participation in SKAO.
SKAO telescopes: two innovative and revolutionary radiotelescopes
During the current construction phase, the member states of this intergovernmental organisation will agree on the contributions and the construction schedule for the next phase of the project.
The SKAO radio telescopes will consist of two arrays of hundreds of thousands of antennas of different types. The first array, dedicated to low-frequency antennas, will be located in the Murchison district of Western Australia, while the second, dedicated to medium and high frequencies, will be distributed in the Karoo Desert of South Africa.
When completed, the SKAO telescopes will be a colossal observatory: they will have tens of times the sensitivity, and thousands of times the observing speed, of the best radio astronomical facilities available today, and their performance will not be surpassed by any other radiotelescope for decades.
In addition to the scientific and technological challenges it will overcome, SKAO also faces an organisational and management challenge that is being addressed through close intergovernmental cooperation on a global scale, cooperation that will serve as a model for other large multinational projects.
Spain's participation in the SKA
Spain has been working on the design and preparatory tasks of the project since the 1990s together with the states that have already ratified the agreement establishing the SKAO - Australia, China, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Switzerland - and those that are in the process of ratifying it - Germany, Canada, South Korea, France, India, Japan and Sweden.
The technical coordination of the Spanish participation in the project is the responsibility of the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), which belongs to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Spanish National Research Council), an agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, whose main role is to organise the national scientific community for its participation in the project.
There are currently astrophysicists from Spain involved in almost all the SKA science working teams, as well as in other groups, such as the energy supply options or the coordination of the regional centres.
Dec 13, 2022 | News
13/12/2022 – The Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) participates in the WEAVE scientific team, whose first observations already show the high quality of the data that the spectrograph will provide
WEAVE, a powerful state-of-the-art multifibre spectrograph installed on the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma, Canary Islands), has obtained its first light. The instrument, whose scientific team includes the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), has obtained spectra of two of the galaxies in Stephan's Quintet, showing that WEAVE is already generating high-quality data.
The first observations were carried out with the so-called large integral field unit (LIFU) fibre bundle, one of WEAVE's three fibre systems in which 547 closely packed optical fibres transmit light in a hexagonal area of the sky to the spectrograph, where it is analysed and recorded.
The LIFU was aimed at NGC 7318a and NGC 7318b, two galaxies at the heart of Stephan's Quintet, a group of interacting galaxies. The group, 280 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus, is undergoing a major galaxy collision and provides a natural laboratory for the consequences of galaxy collisions on galaxy evolution. The spectra obtained by WEAVE reveal the motions of stars and gas, the chemical composition of the stars, the temperatures and densities of the gas clouds, among others, and provide insight into how galaxy collisions transform the galaxies in the group.
"Our goal was to host a unique instrument that would enable cutting-edge astronomical research. We are now pleased to demonstrate that the LIFU part of WEAVE not only works, but also produces high-quality data", says Marc Balcells, director of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (ING) to which the telescope hosting WEAVE belongs. For his part, WEAVE principal investigator Gavin Dalton highlights "the wealth of complexity revealed by a single detailed observation of this pair of nearby galaxies, which provides an excellent illustration of the power and flexibility of WEAVE".
Left: The William Herschel Telescope with WEAVE. The WEAVE positioner is housed in the 1.8-metre black box above the top-end ring. Optical fibres run along the telescope structure to the light-gray enclosure on the left which houses the WEAVE spectrograph. Credit: Sebastian Kramer. Right: The JWST image with the WEAVE LIFU pointing at Stephan's Quintet for the first-light observation. The LIFU gathers light from 547 points on the sky for analysis by the WEAVE spectrograph (each circle indicates an optical fibre 2.6 arcseconds in diameter). The observation provides physical information from each separate region of each galaxy as well as the space in between. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI (background image); Aladin (overlay with fibres).
WEAVE, A STATE-OF-THE-ART SPECTROGRAPH
WEAVE is a multi-mode, multi-fibre spectrograph built by a consortium of European astronomical institutions, led by the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council, to become the next generation spectroscopic facility for the WHT.
WEAVE uses optical fibres to collect light from celestial sources and transmits it to a two-armed spectrograph. The spectrograph separates the light into its different wavelengths, or colours, and records them on large-format CCD light detectors. WEAVE's versatility is one of its greatest strengths. While the LIFU mode houses 547 tightly packed fibres to image large areas of the sky, in MOS mode up to 960 individual fibres can be placed separately using two robots to capture the light from many hundreds of stars, galaxies or quasars. In mIFU mode, the fibres are organised into 20 units, each consisting of 37 fibres, which are used to study small and large targets, such as nebulae and distant galaxies.
WEAVE also provides velocities along the line of sight through the Doppler effect. Depending on the science target, there is a choice between two spectral resolution powers: at low resolution, the spectra distinguish velocity differences of about 5 kilometres per second, and at high resolution of 1.2 kilometres per second. Even at its lowest power of resolution, WEAVE records the line-of-sight velocities of stars with accuracies similar to those of the transverse velocities measured by ESA's Gaia satellite.
The advantage of the LIFU comes from the sheer amount of information contained in each observation. WEAVE produces spectra for each of 31,500 points or regions in and around the galaxies in two hours. The intensity of light from the fibres builds the image of the galaxies shown in the centre. The individual spectra (intensity at each wavelength; seven examples shown) provide a wealth of information about the physical conditions at each location. At the two galaxy nuclei (top-right) the spectra indicate moderately-old stars (one billion years) and no on-going star formation. The narrow, peaked spectra in the lower-right are typical of gas (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur) heated to over 10,000 degrees by very young stars, whereas the broad, asymmetric peaks in the spectra shown on the left indicate turbulent shocks between gas clouds. WEAVE is particularly accurate at measuring wavelengths, or velocities. In the bottom-left panel (in red) obtained in the high spectral resolving power mode, velocity distributions as narrow as 12.8 km/s can be measured.
SCIENCE WITH WEAVE
Over the next five years, the ING will devote 70% of the time available at the WHT to eight large surveys with WEAVE, selected from those proposed by the astronomical communities of the partner countries. All of these surveys require spectra of up to millions of individual stars and galaxies, a goal made possible by WEAVE's ability to observe nearly a thousand objects at a time.
These surveys cover studies of stellar evolution, Milky Way science, galaxy evolution and cosmology. In synergy with the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite, WEAVE's MOS mode will be used to obtain spectra of several million stars in the disc and halo of our host galaxy, enabling the development of Milky Way archaeology. Nearby and distant galaxies, some detected by the LOFAR radiotelescope, will be studied for their growth history. And quasars will be used as beacons to map the spatial distribution and interaction of gas and galaxies when the universe was only about 20% of its present age.
The ING will also make 30% of the time available for projects competitively selected from among those proposed by astronomers in ING partner countries. These projects will take advantage of WEAVE's versatility to provide quick answers to immediate questions. There are also channels for programmes that jointly exploit WEAVE and the diverse capabilities of the telescopes of the Canary Islands Observatories such as the 10.4 metre Gran Telescopio Canarias.
WEAVE's construction has been funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC, UK), the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA, NL), the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO, NL), the Isaac Newton Group of Telescope (ING, UK/NL/ES), the Astrophysical Institute of the Canaries (IAC, ES), the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO, ES), the Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCI), the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF, IT), the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS, FR), Paris Observatory – University of Paris Science and Letters (FR), Besançon Observatory (FR), Region île de France (FR), Region Franche-Comté (FR), Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE, MX), National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT, MX), Lund Observatory (SE), Uppsala University (SE), the Leibniz Institute AIP (DE), Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA, DE), University of Pennsylvania (US), and Konkoly Observatory (HU).
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Shoko Jin et al., 2022, "The wide-field, multiplexed, spectroscopic facility WEAVE: Survey design, overview, and simulated implementation", MNRAS, accepted for publication. http://arxiv.org/abs/2212.03981
May 25, 2022 | News
25/05/2022 – The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will enable progress to be made in the search for signs of life in the galaxy and in the observation of pulsars, black holes and gravitational waves. The technical coordination of the Spanish participation in the project is carried out by the Institute de Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC)
The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday the agreements by which the Ministry of Science and Innovation will allocate 2.5 million euros to the international radiotelescope Square Kilometre Array (SKA), of which 0.7 million euros will come from the European funds of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and will be devoted to the development of its instrumentation.
The SKA radiotelescope will consist of hundreds of thousands of antennas of different types, spread over different locations, ranging from the Karoo Desert in South Africa, which will host the core of high and medium frequency dishes, to the Murchison Shire in Australia, which will host the low frequency antennas.
The SKA will be thousands of times faster at observing the sky than the best radioastronomy facilities today and will enable astronomers to make sky observations in great detail, exceeding the image resolution quality of the Hubble space telescope by several orders of magnitude.
In this way, the SKA radio telescope will make ground-breaking contributions to astrophysics, astrobiology, fundamental physics, geophysics and geodesy. Among other functionalities, it will enable progress to be made in the search for signs of life in the galaxy and the observation of pulsars, black holes and gravitational waves.
Spain's participation in SKA
Our country has been participating in SKA since 2011 and has expressed its interest in participating as a full partner in the SKA observatory which, under the legal form of an international body, will be the entity responsible for carrying out the construction of the world's largest radiotelescope.
Part of the amount approved on Tuesday will be recognised by SKA as part of the agreed contribution with which Spain will become a full member.
The technical coordination of the Spanish participation in the project is the responsibility of the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), which belongs to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Spanish National Research Council), an agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, whose main role is to organise the national scientific community for its participation in the project.
At present, astrophysicists from Spain are involved in almost all the science working teams of the SKA, as well as in other groups, such as the energy supply options or the coordination of the regional centres. In addition, a representative of the CDTI has been appointed to encourage Spanish industrial participation in SKA developments.
Aug 27, 2021 | News
27th August 2021 – The IAA-CSIC heads one of the eleven articles that make up a special issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on the results of LOFAR
After almost a decade of work, an international scientific team has published the most detailed images ever obtained of galaxies, which provide information about their internal workings in unprecedented detail. The images were created from data collected by LOFAR (Low Frequency Array), a network of more than 70,000 small antennas distributed throughout Europe. The images and the associated scientific results have been published in a special issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, one of them headed by the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC).
A compilation of the science results. Credit from left to right starting at the top: N. Ramírez-Olivencia et al. [radio]; NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University), edited by R. Cumming [optical], C. Groeneveld, R. Timmerman; LOFAR & Hubble Space Telescope,. Kukreti; LOFAR & Sloan Digital Sky Survey, A. Kappes, F. Sweijen; LOFAR & DESI Legacy Imaging Survey, S. Badole; NASA, ESA & L. Calcada, Graphics: W.L. Williams.
The universe is flooded with electromagnetic radiation, of which visible light, the one captured by our eyes, is only a small portion. From short wavelengths, like gamma rays and X-rays, to long wavelengths, like radio, each part of the spectrum of light reveals something unique about the universe.
The LOFAR network captures images at radio frequencies that, unlike shorter wavelength sources such as visible light, are not blocked by clouds of dust and gas that can obscure astronomical objects. Thus, regions of the sky that appear dark to our eyes glow brightly in radio waves, and radio telescopes allow us to observe areas obscured by dust, such as regions where stars form or the heart of galaxies.
The new images obtained with the LOFAR network go beyond the limits of what we know about galaxies and supermassive black holes. The images reveal the inner workings of both nearby and distant galaxies with a resolution twenty times sharper than typical LOFAR images, made possible by the unique way the team made use of the network.
This image shows real radio galaxies from Morabito et al. (2021). The gif fades from the standard resolution to the high resolution, showing the detail we can see by using the new techniques. Credit: L.K. Morabito; LOFAR Surveys KSP
The more than 70,000 LOFAR antennas are spread across Europe, with the majority in the Netherlands. In standard operation, only signals from antennas located in the Netherlands are combined and a virtual telescope is created with a collecting surface of about 120 kilometers in diameter. By using signals from all European antennas, the team has increased the diameter of the "lens" to nearly two thousand kilometers, providing a twenty-fold increase in resolution.
Furthermore, unlike conventional array antennas that combine multiple signals in real time to produce images, LOFAR uses a new concept in which the signals collected by each antenna are digitized, transported to the central processor, and then combined to create an image. Each LOFAR image is the result of combining the signals of more than 70,000 antennas, which makes its extraordinary resolution possible.
A CHALLENGE OF A DECADE
Even before LOFAR began operating in 2012, the European scientific team began to work on the colossal challenge of combining the signals of more than 70,000 antennas located at a distance of up to two thousand kilometers. "Our goal is that our work allows the international scientific community to use the entire European network of LOFAR telescopes for their own science, and to create high-resolution images with relative ease without having to spend years acquiring the knowledge," says Leah Morabito, researcher at Durham University who has coordinated the work.
The LOFAR results provide new perspectives on known galaxies, show their structure in detail and allow the detection of jets and ejections of material emerging from supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei. Specifically, the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) has contributed with a study of the galaxy Arp-299, which stands out for its high rate of supernova production, or explosions produced by the death of stars with more than eight times the mass of the Sun.
"At the IAA we have been investigating this galaxy for years, which due to the interaction with the companion galaxy is generating outbreaks of star formation -says Naím Ramírez-Olivencia, IAA researcher who heads the study-. It is, therefore, a very interesting object because it allows us to study in almost real time how stars are born, die and interact with the surrounding environment ".
"Our work has been chosen for this compendium of articles related to LOFAR because it is one of the first to show the capabilities of this wonderful instrument for low radio frequencies. Thanks to LOFAR we have managed to detect, for example, a gas outflow emanating from one of the nuclei of the Arp299 galaxy system, and with a scale comparable to the galaxy from which it emanates. Such a result has only been possible thanks to the great sensitivity and resolution of LOFAR, which in its current configuration constitutes a milestone in the astronomy and opens up a world of new discoveries", concludes the researcher.
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