GUAIX

Our group is implementing a new facility defined as the LICA (Laboratorio de Instrumentación Científica Avanzada). LICA starts as a 25 m² room in the new Astrophysics Department headquarters located in the West building of the Facultad CC. Físicas of the UCM. LICA is considered a top priority facility by the UCM-UPM Campus de Excelencia Internacional Project. LICA includes a CVI Melles Griot stable optical table.

LICA is funded by the UCM, the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Comunidad de Madrid (ASTRID and ASTROMADRID projects), CDTI and the GTC Consolider-Ingenio 2010 project.

Laboratory activities of our group make use of the UCM CAIs (Centros de Apoyo a la Investigación).

GUAIX member Juan Carlos Muñoz Mateos has obtained his PhD with his thesis work: "Analysis of the spatial distribution of stars, gas and dust in nearby galaxies". Browse the pictures at image gallery

Images from the NASA repository maintained by the Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center. "The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth."

2012-02-12

(GMT 02:22:47) This picture of Madrid at night has extremely good resolution. West is up and North is to the right.

By comparing with the previous one we are detecting changes in illumination. Some of them are good news since some road lights were switch off may be due to the economical crisis. Unfortunately some new bright spots are also present.

Click on the thumbnail picture for a bigger image.

Browse Madrid at Night: The Brightest Spots

ISS030-E-82053

2011-02-11

Taken also at night (GMT 23:11:50) this beatiful picture with a 200mm lens shows details of the street lights of Madrid and surounding area. It is easy for Madrid citizens to find the area of their homes and the main features of the nocturnal image including the Barajas International Airport (blue-white lights at NE) and the Santiago Bernabéu soccer stadium. The protected forest area of Monte de El Pardo is completely black as seen from space.

ISS026-E-26493

2010-04-25

After begging for a picture of Madrid at night for light pollution studies, Astro_Soichi has made some from International Spatial Station (ISS) where he is a crew member. Astronaut Soichi Noguchi belongs to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and has at the time of writting this post 225,379 followers on twitter.

We are using these pictures for a light pollution study of Madrid. Read more on this. Thanks to Peter Caltner (from Graz, Austria) who has found the pictures between the thousands of them.

ISS 023-E-29556

Mosaic with images taken by astronaut Soichi Noguchi aboard ISS (april 2010). Processed by undergraduated Alicia González (becaria de excelencia de la Comunidad de Madrid CAM) and Alejandro Sánchez under supervision of prof. Jaime Zamorano.

ISS images of Madrid year 2004

Imagen y fichero	fecha, nubosidad, tamaños (bytes) y Notas
ISS010E08325	22/11/2004 10% 60049 868670	ISS010E08326	22/11/2004 10% 50107 654342 Prácticamente igual que la anterior, solo que con un menor ángulo
ISS010E08327	22/11/2004 10% 60711 869963 Una versión "más cercana" de la primera	ISS010E08328	22/11/2004 10% 62092 873990 Algo más centrada que la anterior
ISS010E08329	22/11/2004 10% 61564 880976 Rotada unos 45º con respecto a las anteriores. Se ve "más cerca"	ISS010E08330	22/11/2004 10% 62031 881454 Prácticamente igual que la anterior, solo un poco más centrada
ISS010E08331	22/11/2004 10% 63195 884987 Menor ángulo de inclinación que la anterior. La elegida para test.	ISS010E08332	22/11/2004 10% 61435 880858 Borrosa en comparación con el resto
ISS010E08333	22/11/2004 10% 63960 889969 Rotada alrededor de 90º con respecto a las primeras imágenes. Movida	ISS006E25295	08/02/2003 25% 52623 1205984 Contraste entre zonas muy nítidas y zonas muy poco nítidas
ISS006E25296	08/02/2003 25% 50354 1110731 Mayor ángulo de inclinación que la anterior	ISS006E25297	08/02/2003 25% 47858 1054832 Ligeramente mejor que las anteriores. Menor ángulo de inclinación
ISS006E25298	08/02/2003 25% 48729 1113628 Ángulo de inclinación mayor	ISS006E25299	08/02/2003 25% 41882 1037699 Bastante borrosa

Dr. Polychronis Papaderos from Centro de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto, Portugal, gave two talks for master in Astrophysics students about "Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxies" on may 5th and 7th.

More pictures at the image gallery.

GUAIX compite para la instalación de uno de los instrumentos de nueva generación para el telescopio español de 10 metros GTC. Este instrumento, llamado MEGARA, proporcionará espectroscopía de campo de integral (1x1 arcmin2) y multi-objeto a resolución intermedia-alta. Entre las fotos de la visita realizada recientemente se ve a Pedro Álvarez (director de GRANTECAN) junto a Armando Gil de Paz (investigador principal de MEGARA) en uno de los Folded-Cass de GTC, lugar donde se instalaría dicho instrumento.

Más fotos en la galería de imágenes.