English (UK)
May 11th 2024
An impressive aurora borealis has been spotted in the Spanish skies on the night of May 10-11, 2024. From Calar Alto, despite the clouds, the intense reddish phenomenon has been captured by several webcams and even by the astronomers present there, who have been able to grab it with their cell phones. Other northen lights may well be seen on May 11th and 12th due to the power of the ongoing solar flares.
On May 9th, 2024, the American NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center's GOES-16 satellite observing the Sun detected strong coronal mass ejections from the giant sunspot called AR3664, the size of about 16 Earths. These ejections brought a solar wind that was directed right at our planet.
Almeria (Spain), March 04th, 2024
The Hispanic Astronomical Center in Andalusia (CAHA), the Spanish Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), and the University of Córdoba (UCO) have signed an action protocol to develop educational and scientific-technological activities in the field of astronomy. Calar Alto has already signed four collaboration agreements with Andalusian public universities.
The University of Córdoba (UCO), the state agency CSIC - through the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, IAA-CSIC, in Granada - and the Hispanic Astronomical Center in Andalusia (CAHA) of Calar Alto have signed a general action protocol to promote a common plan of academic, scientific-technical and social activities.
Almeria (Spain), November 29th, 2023
Using images from space telescopes, an international team of astronomers has found a remarkable system of six planets orbiting in a synchronized manner -- in resonance -- the relatively bright and nearby star HD110067.
The planetary system, first detected by dedicated satellites catching the tiny eclipses provoked by the planets passing in front of their star, was followed-up with the CARMENES spectrograph at Calar Alto, to infer the masses of the planets, all found to be in the sub-Neptune regime.
HD110067 is to date the closest, rare resonant planetary system unperturbed for over a billion years. It will be further monitored with CARMENES on the CAHA 3.5 m telescope.
In the northern constellation of Coma Berenices stands a star named HD110067. Although it is ten times too faint to be visible to the naked eye from the still dark Calar Alto skies, it is an orange dwarf star close thus bright enough to be visible with common binoculars, as it lies only about 100 light-years away from the Sun, albeit it is 20% smaller than our star.
Almeria (Spain), July 14th, 2023
CARMENES studies the puffiest known exoplanet atmosphere.
An international team of researchers has used the CARMENES spectrograph to study the atmosphere of HAT-P-67b, the largest but least dense transiting gas giant known to date. From the Calar Alto data, the puffy atmosphere of the exoplanet appears highly ionized and could be escaping at a rate of 10 million tons per second.
Planets in our solar system have vastly different atmospheres. The atmospheres of planets outside our solar system, or exoplanets, show an even richer diversity, and one of the goals of modern astronomy is to characterize this diversity.
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