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)
The Nanocosmos project was presented at The Physics of Evolved Stars (POE2015) conference by Nanocosmos astronomer Dr. Nick Cox on behalf of the three PIs. This international meeting, held from 8-12 June in Nice, France, was organised to honour Dr. Olivier Chesneau (Observatoire de Nice) who passed away in 2014. Presentations at the meeting covered the broad range of scientific interests of Olivier: from AGB stars, Planetary Nebulae, R CrB stars, Novae, Symbiotic systems, and many more. Many presentations at this meeting centred on understanding the formation and presence of dust and molecules in circumstellar environments of both low- and high-mass evolved stellar systems, topics of particular interest to Nanocosmos researchers.
Two NANOCOSMOS members, Prof. José Cernicharo and Dr. Javier R. Goicoechea gave two invited talks at this workshop in Poland. José Cernicharo showed the NANOCOSMOS latests results from the ALMA observations of the archetypical AGB carbon-star IRC+10216. The NANOCOSMOS team has published 4 articles (see publications) on these results (including IRAM observations) and new exciting results are expected for the coming months. Javier R. Goicoechea talked about the velocity-resolved [CII] emission and [CII]/FIR mapping along Orion. The [CII] 158μm fine structure line is arising in gas irradiated by UV-photons from the Trapezium cluster and contributes significantly to the cooling of the cold neutral medium. These observations in combination with Far-Infrared photometric images of the dust emission and maps of the H41α hydrogen recombination and CO provide an unprecedented close view (0,16 light-years in resolution) of the Orion Cloud surrounding the Trapezium. Stay tuned¡
![[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)
