Brief News

April 28th 2021

The program Calar Alto Academy, in its 2021 edition, has allowed the identification of the galactic nova AT2021kgk, leading to the publication of the details and conclusions of the observation, and the spectrum of the source as well, in professional scientific channels.

The students and teachers from the University of Barcelona decided devoting part of their observing time of their practical work to obtain spectra of a transient source named AT2021kgk, whose discovery had been announced 3 nights before.

March 9th 2020

The optical engineer Concepción Cárdenas Vázquez has been awarded the MERAC Prize for the Best Doctoral Thesis in New Technologies (Instrumental) by the European Astronomical Society (EAS)

The thesis encompasses the development of PANIC, an infrared, wide-field camera that operated and is being upgraded for the Calar Alto Observatory

FONDATION MERAC (Mobilising European Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology) and the European Astronomical Society (EAS) awards biyearly the MERAC prize to the best thesis developed in Europe, an award that seeks to promote innovative research in astrophysics and cosmology and support young researchers. The prize, 25,000 euros, in the category of New Technologies, Instrumental, has been awarded in 2020 to the thesis of Concepción Cárdenas "PANIC, a large field infrared camera for Calar Alto", developed at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC).

19 November 2019

The Diaro de Almeria newspaper, which celebrates its 50th anniversary, has given Calar Alto the prize for the best international presence brought by the observatory to the Almería province – since its start as the German-Spanish Astronomical Center back in 1975, until its latest findings as the Hispanic Astronomical Center in Andalusia, operated jointly by the Spanish Superior Research Council (through IAA/CSIC, the Institute of Astrophysics in Andalusia in Granada) and Junta de Andalucía since 2019.