Category: NANOCOSMOS

Nature paper led by NANOCOSMOS members

/ Marcelo Castellanos

The Nature Journal published yesterday a paper entitled “Compression and ablation of the photo-irradiated molecular cloud the Orion Bar”, led and with the participation of several members of our group.

One-arcsecond-resolution millimetre-wave images taken with ALMA enable the ‘skin’ of the Orion molecular cloud to be resolved. The stunning images reveal a fragmented ridge of high-density filamentary substructures, photoablative gas flows and instabilities that suggest that the cloud edge has been compressed by a high-pressure wave expanding into the molecular cloud. These results are in contrast to predictions from static equilibrium models and reveal a very dynamic UV-irradiated cloud edge.

Link to the paper: Compression and ablation of the photo-irradiated molecular cloud the Orion Bar. Nature Letters. Doi: 10.1038/nature18957

 

Prof. Christine Joblin awarded the Legion of Honour

/ Marcelo Castellanos

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. cjoblin_legion_honourChristine 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).

You can read the full press release (in French).

Congrats Christine!!!

NANOCOSMOS at the 1st Chilean-Spanish School on Astrochemistry

/ Marcelo Castellanos

The 1st Chilean-Spanish School on Astrochemistry has just begun this week at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional de Cerro Galán, located in Santiago (Republic of Chile).  The school is organized by the Universidad de Chile, Universidad Autónoma de Chile and the Group ofGroup_photo_Chile_School Molecular Astrophysics at the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM-CSIC).

Six spanish researchers take part in the school (José Cernicharo, head of the Group of Molecular Astrophysics at ICMM-CSIC, Javier R. Goicoechea, Marcelino Agúndez, Belén Tercero, all from ICMM-CSIC, together with Asunción Fuente, astronomer at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in Spain and Carlos Cabezas, researcher at the Universidad de Valladolid).

The school will consist of several conferences on astronomical instrumentation, observational techniques and methods to derive the physical conditions in the Interstellar Medium. Several workshops will be held on molecular spectroscopy, theoretical calculations and chemical modelling.

Link to the school webpage: 1ª Escuela Hispano-Chilena de Astroquímica

Link to “La Nación” newspaper article: “Primera Escuela Chilena de Astroquímica inicia actividades”

 

A “nano-constellation” story at the ICMM

/ Marcelo Castellanos

The commissioning of the Multiple Ion Cluster Source (MICS), one of the four modules of the Stardust machine, is ongoing at the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM-CSIC). The MICS module will be capable to control the chemical composition as well as the size of the produced nanoparticles.

As part of the commissioning, first successful tests have been made with the production of copper and iron nanoparticles. Dr. Lidia Martínez, one of the postdoctoral researchers in charge of the commissioning at the NANOCOSMOS team, has taken the first sample image of iron nanoparticles (top image). Just a bit of photo retouching and the image in the center resembles that at the bottom, the Ursa Major constellation. Stars and nanoparticles hand in hand.

The first “nano-constellation” at the laboratory!!!

first_Fe_NPs
The first “nano-constellation” at the laboratory