Call for applications for IScAI 2012

IScAI Students visit the Gran Telescopio Canarias
 (Photo: Consolider-GTC)

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and partner institutions announce the 2012 edition of the International School for Advanced Instrumentation or IScAI, an international collaboration between universities, research centers and technologic companies with the goal of offering astronomers, physicists and engineers specialised formation in all areas related with the designs and building of cutting-edge scientific instrumentation.

The programme consists of five weeks of intensive course work on five different subjects related to the design and construction of astronomical instrumentation. Each one imparted by top professors on its field: in optics, Steve Eikenberry from University of Florida; in mechanics, Manuel Maldonado (FRACTAL S.L.N.E); in software, Nicolas Carfiel (Universidad Complutense de Madrid); in electronics, Enrique Joven (IAC); and in management Marisa García Vargas (FRACTAL S.L.N.E).

After the theoretical lessons, students can opt to a hands-on period in institutions or companies related to the school, working in world-class instrumentation programs.

These will be held at the headquarters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, in La Laguna, on the island of Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands. The IScAI will start in May 2012 and is open to astronomers, physicists and engineers worldwide. The deadline for applications is March 1, 2012.

IScAI founding institutions are Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Spain), University of Florida (USA), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica de México (Mexico) and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico). Other institutions have joined like Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, and Centro de Astrobiología (Spain). Also the companies EADS Astrium Crisa, Fractal SLNE, GMV, IDOM, LIDAX, y NTE-Sener.

The IScAI 2012 is funded by the grant "First Science with the GTC", under the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Programme of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

For more information about the IScAI and the registration procedure, please check the school’s web site at: http://iscai.iac.es

UF astronomers contribute to NASA’s planet discoveries

Published on University of Florida News on Thursday, January 26, 2012.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — NASA announced today the discovery of 11 new “solar systems” hosting at least 26 planets found with data from NASA’s Kepler Mission.

Kepler's Planetary Systems, Jan. 2012 Multiple planet systems discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. Newly found planets are shown here in green. The eight planets of the solar system are shown in blue. Credit: NASA Ames/Jason Steffen, Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics

The discovery nearly doubles the number of verified Kepler planets so far. It also triples the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits – or passes in front of — its host star. Such systems are particularly valuable for the clues they provide about how planets form.

Eric B. Ford, associate professor of the astronomy department at the University of Florida, is part of the Kepler Mission science team. Ford’s research group at UF, including graduate student Robert Morehead and postdoctoral associate Althea Moorhead, has contributed to several previous Kepler discoveries. Ford is lead author of the paper describing Kepler-23 and Kepler-24, two of the 11 systems announced today.

In this research, Ford and his team not only describe the two new planetary systems but also develop a new technique that, in Ford’s words “dramatically accelerates planet discovery and will enable astronomers to confirm planets transiting fainter and more distant stars.”

The Kepler Mission uses a 1-meter space telescope to stare constantly at a patch of the Milky Way, registering the small decreases in the light from stars caused when a planet crosses in front of it. With this tool, astronomers are able to constantly monitor more than 160,000 stars at a time.

Until now, confirming that small decreases in a star’s brightness was caused by a planet required additional observations and time-consuming analysis. The new technique takes advantage of the gravitational effects that different planets in a system have on each other’s orbits. By precisely timing the deviations from the expected orbital times caused by this effect, the team was able to detect the gravitational tug exerted by the planets on each other, and confirm 10 of the newly announced planetary systems.

Five of the new planetary systems contain a pair of planets where the inner planet orbits the star twice during each orbit of the outer planet. Another five systems contain a pair of planets where the outer planet circles the star twice for every three times the inner planet orbits its star.

“These configurations help to amplify the gravitational interactions between the planets, similar to how my sons kick their legs on a swing at the right time to go higher,” said Jason Steffen, the Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow at Fermilab Center for Astroparticle Physics and lead author of a paper confirming four of the systems.

The new planets orbit close to their host stars, their size ranging from 1.7 times the radius of Earth to about the size of Jupiter. Fifteen of them are smaller than Neptune and further observations will be required to determine which of them are rocky like Earth and which have thick gaseous atmospheres like Neptune. The confirmed planets orbit their host star once every 6 to 143 days, so all of them are closer to their host star than Venus is to the sun.

The new discoveries will be published in the Astrophysical Journal and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Searching for exoplanets using real Kepler data is open to everyone by visiting planethunters.org. For more information about the Kepler mission visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler.