Prof. Stephen Eikenberry from Department of Astronomy at the University of Florida visited our team. Steve is principal investigator of FLAMINGOS-2, the near-infrared imager and multi-object facility spectrograph for the Gemini 8-m telescopes.

He is also PI of CIRCE, an all-reflective near-infrared (1-2.5 micron) cryogenic imager and polarimeter which will be part of the instruments of the 10m telescope GTC. We are very interested in this instrument since we plan to carry out a deep survey to find z=2 Hα emission-line galaxies using it.

The images show snapshots of Prof. Eikenberry and his wife Verónica with Rafael Guzmán and Jesús Gallego (and family) enjoying a typical spanish dinner after a fruitful meeting about science with CIRCE and future astronomical instrumentation projects.