To illustrate the celebration of the International Year of Astronomy IYA2009, some members of UCM Dept. Astrophysics have displayed a big poster with some spectacular images.

More on this at IYA2009 at UCM.

The last 15 to 17 December 2008 the AEGIS collaboration meet at Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz. J. Gallego and R. Guzmán were nominated as "core" members and P.G. Pérez-González was nominated as a "regular" member. GUAIX is the only spanish group represented in the AEGIS core.

UCM was selected to host the AEGIS meeting in december 2009.

A team leaded by Kartik Sheth has been recently awarded 637 hours of Spitzer observing time to carry out an extensive infrared survey of nearby galaxies. The team comprises researches of several institutions, including GUAIX members Armando Gil de Paz and Juan Carlos Muñoz Mateos. The so-called Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G) will map more than 1700 galaxies closer than 40 Mpc using the IRAC camera at 3.6 and 4.5 microns, the only channels that will work at full sensitivity once Spitzer runs out of coolant. These observations will shed light on crucial issues regarding the structure of galaxies: bars, rings, spiral arms, truncations in the light profiles... Below you can see three nearby galaxies imaged at 3.6 micron by the SINGS survey, showing the kind of data S4G will provide.

The Shanghai Normal University hosted "The Starburst-AGN connection conference", attended by more than 100 astronomers from all around the world, including the GUAIX member Pablo G. Pérez-González.

Pablo presented his research about the assembly of stellar mass in galaxies in the last 12 Gyr (90% of the age of the Universe) and the role of Active Galactic Nuclei in the evolution of galaxies.