Christine Joblin, one of the NANOCOSMOS project PIs, has been awarded chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour for her public service and professional activities with eminent merits in scientific research both at the national and international levels. Christine Joblin is a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in l’Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP, Université Toulouse 3).
The second announcement of the European Conference on Laboratory Astrophysics – “Gas on the Rocks” – ECLA 2016 has been issued today. This conference will be held at the CSIC headquarters (Madrid, Spain) in November 21 – 25, 2016. The webpage is open with all the relevant information.
www.ecla2016.com
More than 30 invited researchers will address new insights on the following science topics:
Comets, asteroids, meteorites and the primitive Solar System nebula: formation and evolution
Protoplanetary disks and planet formation
Planet, Moon, and exoplanet surfaces and atmospheres
The signatures of the evolving interstellar medium
Dense Clouds: the gas-ice interface and molecular complexity
Chemical fingerprints of star formation
The late stages of star evolution: dust formation
Supernovae and shocks: high-energy processing of matter
The European Conference on Laboratory Astrophysics – Gas on the Rocks (ECLA2016) will be held at the CSIC headquarters in Madrid on November 21 – 25, 2016.
The conference will address the state of the art in laboratory astrophysics within the context of new astrophysical data and to improve communication and collaboration between astrophysicists, physicists and (geo) chemists. Hence, the conference structure will consist of invited talks presenting topics in astrophysics and planetary science and related laboratory astrophysics activities. Contributing talks will be selected to complement the topics from the astrophysical, laboratory, and theoretical/modeling points of view.
The AROMA (Astrochemical Research of Organics using Molecular Analyzer) experimental set-up has seen the first light by showing nice peaks of C60 and its 13Cisomers in Toulouse. The AROMA main purpose is to analyze the molecular content of cosmic dust particles, more specifically stardust analogues that will be produced in the Nanocosmos Stardust machine in Madrid.
The central part of AROMA arrived from Greece at the University Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier (France) on September 18th 2015. The construction was performed by Fasmatech, a young Greek company, following requirements from the IRAP scientific team. It consists of a linear ion trap combined with a high-resolution time of flight mass spectrometer. After months of development, the setup was delivered on time in Toulouse at the laboratory LCAR. Only two days later, a first light could be obtained. The laser desorption ionization of fullerene showed nice peaks of C60 and its 13C isomers. Further optimization of the signal was performed on the next days and this will continue in the coming weeks. The IRAP team is also working on combining the two steps laser desorption laser ionization source to the instrument. The objective is to analyze the molecular organic phase at a micron scale.
A legacy program to map the far-IR fine structure line of C+ at 158 microns with the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has been recently awarded to a small international team led by Prof. Tielens (Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands) and including 3 members of the NANOCOSMOS project, Dr. J. R. Goicoechea (ICMM-CSIC), Dr. O. Berné (IRAP, CNRS) and Prof. J. Cernicharo (ICMM-CSIC). The observing time to map the Orion molecular cloud will be more than 50 hours, which means several flights on board SOFIA!!
[CII] 158μm emission image taken by Herschel with the locations of famous regions in the cloud identified (Goicoechea et al. 2015). SOFIA will map an area 20 times larger than the region covered by Herschel.
The ionized carbon emission dominates the gas cooling of the low density interstellar medium and it is the brightest emission line in the IR spectrum of galaxies. In the next 2 years, astronomers will use the instrument upGREAT flying on board SOFIA to map an area of more than 20 times the central region of Orion recently observed with the Herschel Space Telescope (Goicoechea et al. 2015, ApJ, 812, 75, see the publications section). This project will allow to uniquely determine the use of the C+ line as a star formation rate indicator, derive the amount of molecular cloud mass not measured by CO (so-called “CO-dark” gas), and semi-empirically determine the photo-electric heating efficiency on Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) and interstellar dust grains.
The Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is a joint project between NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) consisting of a custom-modified Boeing 747SP aircraft with an effective aperture of 2.5 m mounted in an open cavity towards the tail of the aircraft.
SOFIA air-to-air over the Sierra Nevada Mountains (Credit: NASA, USRA (Universities Space Research Association), and L-3 Communications Integrated Systems/Jim Ross)
Christine Joblin is a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in l’Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP, Université Toulouse 3).
![[CII] 158μm emission image taken by Herschel with the locations of famous regions in the cloud identified (Goicoechea et al. 2015)](http://nanocosmos.iff.csic.es/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/plotmap_Cplus_PR.jpg)
