Brief News

October 9th 2025

The Calar Alto Observatory, the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), and the University of Almería are organizing an international conference about robotic telescopes in Retamar-El Toyo (Almería). Many astronomical observations are already being performed with this kind of autonomous instruments, which will become even more common in the future.

An international meeting about robotic telescopes, gathering more than 100 participants from 26 countries giving 55 talks, is being held this week (October 6-10, 2025) at the Barceló Cabo de Gata Hotel in Retamar-El Toyo (close to Almería city). This is the eighth meeting of its kind since 2009, entirely dedicated to autonomous telescopes. Such devices allow observations to be made in various areas of astrophysics, with hardly any human intervention.

2nd July 2025

Last Monday, June 30th, was "Asteroid Day." Calar Alto is part of ESA's Planetary Defense project, so we joined in the celebration. Using our smallest telescopes, the 1.23 m telescope and the Schmidt camera, we are discovering new objects while refining the orbits of known asteroids.

David Alexander Kann, a former researcher at IAA-CSIC and common user of the Calar Alto telescopes, has passed away on March 10th, 2023. He will be dearly missed by her/his many colleagues at the observatory and all over the world.

Dr. Kann was an expert in the field of transient phenomena (gamma ray bursts, kilonovae, ...) with hundreds of publications based on multi-wavelength data taken at many ground- and space-based facilities.
Alex was also an expert in cats and heavy metal music. One of his closest collaborators describes him as "an impressive astronomer" and "the sweetest person I've ever met".

Rest in peace, Alex.