GUAIX

Elisa Toloba Jurado, Consolider-GTC member of the Galaxies-UCM team, was awarded the prize of the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA) for the best dissertation of 2011: "The Origin of Dwarf Early-Type Galaxies."

Previously, the SEA awarded another Consolider-GTC researcher and member of GUAIX, Juan Carlos Muñoz, the prize for best thesis read in 2010. Both belong to the Department of Astrophysics and Atmospheric Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). From here, we would like to congratulate Elisa on the obtaining of this award.

The Universidad Complutense de Madrid group of Extragalactic Astrophysics and Astronomical Instrumentation (GUAIX), member of the cluster of Global Change and New Energies in the International Excellence Campus Moncloa have combined night images of the Earth obtained from the International Space Station (ISS) with the objetive of make mosaics to study the light pollution in large areas.  Coinciding with the International Week Against Light Pollution, they have  released the result of combine more than 1000 images over Europe and The United Estates of America. The intensity and the colors of this images could be used to determine the type of lighting of the countries and calculate like never before, the electrical consumption and the energetic efficiency in street lighting. Light pollution is evident in these images have great impact on human health and the environment.

Image mosaic of Europe, northern Africa and parts of the Middle East in color (ISS).Background image black and white DMSP (NOAA). Original images of Image Scienceand Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center, "The Gateway to AstronautPhotography of Earth."

http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/

Mosaic: Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel y Jaime Zamorano Calvo, Dpto. de Astrofísica y CC. de la Atmósfera UCM.

The study with high resolution images at night also allows to measure the intensity of lighting, source of light pollution and determine its color. It has recently demonstrated the importance of the type of lamp used, since several studies have revealed the negative impact of blue/white light on human health and the environment.

Venus and Jupiter bathed in zodiacal light from GTC in Roque de los Muchachos (Isla de La Palma). The astronomers are aiming the binoculars in the opposite direction looking for comet Garrard...

This mosaic of the Iberian Peninsula at Night was build using ISS nocturnal images taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (2008-2012).

A new rack Fujitsu RX-300 high-performance server powered by Intel Xeon X5687 CPU and 16 Gb of RAM has been acquired as reference computing system for the group.The new GUAIX translates into a much faster 24h available web server (2 Gbit Ethernet), database services, backup for critical files and other roles. This machine is being hosted by the UCM Data Processing Center, that guarantees 24h support.