NANOCOSMOS will organize the ECLA2016 – Gas on the Rocks conference

2015/12/23 / Marcelo Castellanos

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.

More info here

NANOCOSMOS astronomers will map Orion with SOFIA

2015/10/26 / Marcelo Castellanos

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)

Javier R. Goicoechea awarded for a study of the interstellar clouds

2015/05/28 / Marcelo Castellanos

Composite image obtained from the emission of ¹²CO (blue), ¹³CO (green), and C₁₈O (red) of the Orion B molecular cloud (IRAM 30m telescope). Credit: J. Pety.

Javier R. Goicoechea, astronomer at the ICMM-CSIC

The Société Française d’Astronomie et d’Astrophysique (SF2A) and the Sociedad Española de Astronomía (SEA) have awarded Javier R. Goicoechea (ICMM-CSIC) and Jérôme Pety (IRAM, France) with the SEA-SF2A 2015 prize for their outstanding achievements in the study of interstellar clouds illuminated by ultraviolet radiation from nearby massive stars, in a French-Spanish scientific research cooperation.

Congrats to both¡¡¡

More info at:

IRAM news

Blog de Consolider-Ingenio ASTROMOL

The NANOCOSMOS Kick-off meeting was opened by the President of CSIC, Emilio Lora-Tamayo

2015/05/06 / Marcelo Castellanos

Emilio Lora-Tamayo, President of CSIC (Spain National Research Council) gave a warm welcome to the NANOCOSMOS team members at the project kick-off meeting which is held at the CSIC headquarters in Madrid (5-6 May, 2015). He addressed the excellent collaboration between CNRS and CSIC in order to solve the fundamental problem of dust formation in the Universe. He also stood out these collaborations to tackle complex problems in all fields of science. “I really hope that in the next years this kind of collaboration between our two institutions will be strengthened”, he added.

NANOCOSMOS workshops/meetings

2017

NANOCOSMOS Interstellar Dust Meeting

Date: 12 – 13 June 2017

Place: Université Paul Sabatier (Toulouse, France)

Key dates:

Abstract submission deadline: April 30th, 2017

Registration deadline: May 14th, 2017

Webpage: https://epolm3-nanocosm.sciencesconf.org/

2016

European Conference on Laboratory Astrophysics – Gas on the Rocks (ECLA2016)

Outcome of the conference: See “A summary of the ECLA2016” link

November 21 – 25, 2016 (CSIC Headquarters, Madrid, Spain)

Webpage: ECLA2016

FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT

Key dates:
Second announcement: February 1st, 2016 (opening of the conference web page).
Deadline for abstract submission: June 15, 2016
Deadline for early registration: July 15, 2016
Deadline for information participants about selected contributing talks: June 30, 2016
Final program: July 15, 2016
Last announcement with final details: November 1st, 2016

Motivation:

Over the last decade, European research activities in the field of laboratory astrophysics have experienced an impressive increase in their potential to address astrophysical problems, in particular by providing essential information on the physical and chemical processes leading to chemical complexity in space resulting in star and planet formation. These activities have been motivated by the interpretation of astronomical observations obtained with single dish telescopes and short baseline interferometers. The wealth of data obtained with ALMA, space facilities (Herschel, Spitzer, Rosetta, the coming JWST, E-ELT), and other ground based observatories (VLTI, NOEMA, …), require new methodologies for the astrophysical modeling that will lead to new challenges for laboratory astrophysics.

This conference aims to address the state of the art in laboratory astrophysics within the context of these 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 astrophysical areas that will be addressed are:

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
Chemical fingerprints of star formation
The late stages of star evolution: dust formation
Supernovae and shocks: high-energy processing of matter

The conference will cover studies in many fields such as spectroscopy, analytical (geo) chemistry, reactivity, nanoscience, and quantum chemistry, pertaining to different matter components (gas, plasma, PAHs, ices, dust, solid surfaces, …).

SOC composition
Jose Cernicharo (chair). ICMM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Christine Joblin (co-chair). IRAP, Univ. Paul Sabatier/CNRS, Toulouse, France
Isabel Tanarro. IEM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Jose Angel Martín Gago. ICMM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Karine Demyk. IRAP, Univ. Paul Sabatier/CNRS, Toulouse, France
Jean-Hugues Fillion. LERMA, UPCM Univ. Paris 06, & Obs. Paris, France
Maria Elisabetta Palumbo. INAF-Catania Astrophysical Obs., Italy
André Canosa. IPR, Univ. Rennes 1/CNRS, France
Harold Linnartz. Leiden Obs., Univ. of Leiden, The Netherlands
Liv Hornekaer. iNANO, Aarhus Univ., Danemark
Peter Sarre. School of Chemistry, Nottingham Univ., UK
Stephan Schlemmer. Phys. Inst., Univ. Koln, Germany
Jonathan Tennyson. Univ. College London, UK
Yves Marrochi. CRPG-CNRS, Nancy, France
Guillermo Muñoz Caro. CAB, INTA-CSIC, Madrid, Spain

LOC composition
Isabel Tanarro (Chair). IEM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Belén Maté. IEM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Víctor J. Herrero. IEM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
José Luis Doménech. IEM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Ángel González-Valdenebro. IEM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Marcelo Castellanos (co-chair). ICMM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Belén Tercero. ICMM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Juan Ramón Pardo. ICMM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Juan Antonio Corbalán. ICMM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Natalia Ruiz-Zelmanovich. ICMM-CSIC, Madrid, Spain