Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental

Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental
Acronym IATE
Established 2006
Director Dr. Diego García Lambas
DIC Dra. Andrea Costa
Address Laprida 922
City Córdoba
State Provincia de Córdoba
Country Argentina
Coordinates 31°25′16″S 64°11′59″W / 31.42111°S 64.19972°W / -31.42111; -64.19972
Web Site http://www.iate.oac.uncor.edu/
e-mail iate@oac.uncor.edu

The Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental (IATE) is a scientific institute funded by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones en Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) and the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC), located in the city of Córdoba, Argentina, and dedicated to the study of different topics in astronomy. The headquarters of the institute are located at the Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba.

History

In the 1960s, Dr. José Luis Sérsic[1] (argentinian scientist mainly known for his empirical law for the intensity of a galaxy called Sersic's Law) created the extragalactic astronomy department at the Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba, where he developed his academic and research activities, forming his first disciples. In 1983, the department became the "Programa de Investigaciones en Astronomía Teórica y Experimental" (IATE), funded by CONICET, under Dr. Sérsic direction. Following the death of Dr. Sérsic on July 19, 1993, the program was discontinued. However, those graduates and PhD who were trained under his tutelage were ordered to continue with the group IATE as research group within the Observatorio Astronómico, under the leadership of Dr. Diego Garcia Lambas, one of the main disciples of Dr. Sérsic. After more than 10 years of hard work forming graduates, PhD and researchers, and to become one of the most numerous research groups within the Observatorio Astronómico, the IATE group has become one of the institutes of CONICET in 2006, with Dr. Diego Garcia Lambas being its first director. The institute then took the name of Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental, retaining the acronym IATE.

The building of the institute located at the Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba.

Members

At the IATE, there are 25 Ph.D in the researcher career of CONICET, 37 Ph.D and postdoctoral fellows, 9 members of the support staff career of CONICET, 1 contract staff, and 2 graduates and Ph.D working at the institute.[2]

Abadi, Mario Charalambous, Carolina Giuppone, Cristian Muriel, Hernán Rodríguez, Facundo Valotto, Carlos
Algorry, David Coenda, Valeria Gonzalez, Elizabeth O'Mill, Ana Laura Rodríguez, Horacio Vega Neme, Luis
Alonso, María Victoria Colazo, Carlos Graña, Darío Oio, Gabriel Ruíz, Andrés Vena Valdarenas, Román
Baravalle, Laura Costa, Andrea Gurovich, Sebastián Paez Tagliaferro, Tania Salerno, Juan Manuel Villalón, Carolina
Beaugé, Cristian Díaz-Giménez, Eugenia Kanagusuku, María José Paz, Dante Sanchez, Bruno Villarreal, Carolina
Benitez Llambay, Alejandro De los Ríos, Martín Krapp, Leonardo Pereyra, Luis Santucho, Ma. Victoria Vrech, Rubén
Benitez Llambay, Pablo Domínguez, Mariano Lares, Marcelo Ragone Figueroa, Cinthia Schmidt, Eduardo Yaryura, Yamila
Bertazzi, Viviana Domínguez, Rubén Luparello, Heliana Ramos Almendares, Felipe Schneiter, Matías Zandivarez, Ariel
Bornancini, Carlos Donoso Navea, Laura Maldonado, Victoria Ramos, Ximena Sgró, Mario Agustín Zurbriggen, Ernesto
Casagrande, Arnaldo Donzelli, Carlos Martínez, Héctor Julián Recabarren, Pablo Sieyra, Valeria
Cécere, Mariana Ferreiro, Diego Merchán, Manuel Renzi, Víctor Sillero Ros, Emanuel
Ceccarelli, Laura Ferrero, Ismael Mondino, Anabella Rodriguez, Adriana Starck Cuffini, Manuel
Chalela García, Martín García Lambas, Diego Muñoz Jofré, María Rosa Rodriguez, Silvio Taverna, Antonella

Scientific Areas

The lines of research are:

Galactic and Extragalactic Astronomy

The Seyfert's Sextet

The 13.8 billion years of the Universe is enough time to form giant objects, being the galaxies one of the most interesting. Galaxies are truly island universes where dark matter, billions of stars and huge amounts of gas and dust coexist in equilibrium, and yet, they are an environment suitable for the formation of new stars. Galaxies also tend to cluster in a network of cosmic proportions which highlights fabulous large structures formed by thousands of galaxies. At the IATE, the study of galaxies has been a constant challenge, which has allowed to consolidate over the years different methods for the study of the formation and evolution of galaxies. Some of the most important are:

These and other tools are used by different scientists at the IATE to perform original and reliable astronomical research.

Large Scale Structure of the Universe

Numerical simulation of a CDM universe with dark energy (Andrey Kravtsov and Anatoly Klypin)

The large-scale structure of the Universe is the field of cosmology that studies the distribution of the matter in the Universe on the largest scales. This field has grown remarkably since the '80s, with the development of three-dimensional maps of galaxies in several bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, and with the observation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The increasing flow of information generated by observations has allowed to obtain reliable characterization of the content of the universe comprising

as well as its distribution. The distribution of the structures seems to follow a hierarchical model where the upper level is dominated by a network of clusters and filaments. On top of that, the universe appears to be isotropic and homogeneous in accordance with the cosmological principle. From the analysis of catalogs and the development of numerical simulations, the distribution is characterized through the implementation of different statistics that allow the study of the spatial distribution as well as the dynamics by means of the velocity field of the matter distribution.

Planetary Systems

Artist's concept of a protoplanetary disk.

The question of the existence of other worlds has been present in the history of mankind for centuries, but only recent scientific evidence has confirmed that planets could exist and are common outside the Solar System. Since the first discovery in 1992, over 850 new exoplanets have been cataloged. Contrary to the Solar System, exoplanets' population presents several examples of exoplanets at very small distances from its stars, highly eccentric planetary orbits, and they are frequently found in configurations not previously imagined. This led to the development of new theories and areas of research, which ultimately can help us to better understand the Solar System. Some of the projects that are currently being developed at the IATE include:

Astrophysical Plasmas

An eruptive prominence on the surface of the sun.

The plasma is the most common state of the baryonic matter in the Universe (99%). Most of a star, the interplanetary and interstellar medium, and the ionosphere, are plasmas. The plasma can also be generated in terrestrial laboratories for industrial applications such as producing surface coatings, precision cuts in lamps, micro-motors, and plasma reactors. A plasma is a fluid consisting of a large number of free charged particles (globally neutral and whose kinetic energy is larger than the electrostatic potential energy between them). The charges and currents that conform a plasma are sources of the electromagnetic fields and, in turn, these fields affect the distribution of charges and currents which makes its dynamics highly nonlinear and very different from that of a neutral gas. When the magnetic fields are capable of modifying an individual particle trajectory, it is said that the plasma is magnetized. The corona is highly magnetized and therefore, several structures are observed, some of which can maintain its stability for relatively long times as dark filaments on the surface of the sun. In the group of astrophysical plasmas, our scientist perform studies about the dynamic configuration and structures of the corona through the analysis of magnetic arcs and prominences, the formation of voids that remain in the plasma due to the interaction of nonlinear waves, the formation of very energetic shock wave capable of sweeping the chromosphere along a whole quadrant, etc. The team also analyse the interaction of stellar winds with the magnetosphere of exoplanets, and they model the morphology of supernova remnants affected by instabilities and the influence of the magnetic field.

Site Testing

The IATE also performs site testing for the installation of large astronomical facilities in the Argentinian territory. During the 90's (1989-1998), the IATE began the first work on astronomical site testing performing seeing measurements in the Antarctic Base Belgrano II. In 1998, measurements of seeing were performed in the Llano de Chajnantor, Atacama (Chile), as part of a project aimed at installing a liquid mercury telescope in Toco volcano. This project was not successful but the group learnt the use of the most modern technologies for measuring sky parameters. Through this experience, the IATE made contact with Dr. Marc Sarazin, of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), with whom, since the year 2000, the IATE began the searching and characterization of candidate sites to install the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT),[3][4][5][6][7] which will be finally installed in Chile, at the Cerro Armazones. During that work, a suitable candidate site was preselected at the Cordón Macón, close to Tolar Grande town. Because of its excellent conditions, the IATE decided to install observational facilities at this site,[8][9] which is the most important project to date for the instrumentation team. The project also involves the development of a program committed to the educational public outreach in astronomy at the town of Tolar Grande, named Ñawi Puna.[10]

View from the Macón peak at the Cordón Macón, Salta, Argentina.

The New Astronomical Complex

The first observatory building at the Macón peak (May, 2012).

The IATE is building an astronomical complex on the Cordón Macón, located at 10 km from the town of Tolar Grande, Salta, Argentina. The site is located at latitude 24.61 South and longitude 67.32 West and at an altitude of 4,650 meters. The location has ideal conditions of humidity and air turbulence, which create almost perfect astronomical seeing. The site infrastructure will enable the development of several observational projects:


FoF meetings

Yearly, the IATE organizes the astronomical meeting named "Friends-of-Friends", usually carried out during the first fortnight of April. The meeting is aimed at stretching the bounds between the astronomers that work at the IATE and their external collaborators, as well as sharing the state-of-the-art of works that are being developed by the IATE members. The talks are split into two different modes: invited speakers present talks of 45+15 minutes, while there are several short talks of 15+5 minutes long.

Year Invited speakers Affiliation Title
2011 Gary Mamon IAP, Paris, France How do galaxies acquire their mass and when do they form their stars?
Juan Madrid CAS, SUT, Melbourne, Australia Structural parameters of globular clusters and UCDs in Virgo and Coma
Norbert Przybilla AI, FAU, Erlangen, Germany Galactochemical evolution as traced by massive stars
Dante Minniti PUC, Santiago, Chile Charting the hidden side of the Milky Way
Gian Luigi Granato INAF, Padova, Italy Puffing up early-type galaxies by baryonic mass loss: Numerical Experiments
Osvaldo Moreschi FAMAF-UNC, Córdoba, Argentina Gravitational lensing in terms of Energy-Momentum tensor and an interesting solution of Einstein equation
2012 Nelson Padilla PUC, Santiago, Chile Megaparsec scale effects on the inner pcs of galaxies
Lucas Macri TAMU, Texas, EE.UU. The Cepheid Distance Scale in the era of precision cosmology
Dante Minniti PUC, Santiago, Chile New Southern Extrasolar Planet Searches
Carlos Briozzo FAMAF-UNC, Córdoba, Argentina Empirical mode decomposition: a new tool for signal analisys
Robert Proctor IAG, Sao Paulo, Brazil JPAS: a new resource for stellar population research?
2013 Daniel Gómez IAFE, UBA, Buenos Aires, Arg. Magnetic fields in astrophysics: the dynamic of the solar corona
Dante Minniti PUC, Santiago, Chile The Milky Way galaxy
Christian Moni-Bidin IAUCN, Antofagasta, Chile Dynamical mass in the solar neighborhood
Mario Díaz UTB, Brownsville, EE.UU. The TOROS project and the advanced LIGO era
Sofía Cora FCAG, UNLP, La Plata, Arg. Galaxy formation: what can we learn from semi-analytic models?
Federico Stasyszyn USM, Munich, Germany Insights on magnetic fields in astrophysics
Facundo Gómez UM, Ann Arbor, EE.UU. Examining galaxy formation and evolution with the Milky Way and its satellites
Nelson Padilla PUC, Santiago, Chile Effects of the stochasticity of galaxy angular momentum growth on star formation
Alessio Romeo UAB, Santiago, Chile Evolution of the metallicity-mass relations from cosmological-SPH simulations of galaxy clusters and groups
Osvaldo Moreschi FAMAF-UNC, Córdoba, Argentina Modeling compact objects by particles in general relativity
Ezequiel Treister UC, Concepción, Chile The cosmic history of black hole growth
Patricia Tissera IAFE, UBA, Buenos Aires, Arg. The stellar haloes of Milky-Way galaxies:chemical patterns and their history of assemble
2014 Osvaldo Moreschi FAMAF-UNC, Córdoba, Argentina Exact solutions with spheroidal geometries and it use in astrophysical systems
Nelson Padilla PUC, Santiago, Chile Effects of spin flips and siews on galaxy formation
Douglas Geisler UC, Concepción, Chile What is a globular cluster? What is an open cluster?
Cesar Bertucci IAFE, UBA, Buenos Aires, Arg. Induced magnetospheres in the Solar System
Pablo Dmitruk DF-UBA, Buenos Aires, Arg. Low frequency fluctuations and magnetic field reversals in MHD turbulence
Lilia Bassino FCAG, UNLP, La Plata, Arg. Stellar systems in the Antlia Cluster
Daniel Carpintero FCAG, UNLP, La Plata, Arg. Tori, chaos, resonances: a new way of looking at orbits
Juan Carlos Forte FCAG, UNLP, La Plata, Arg. Globular clusters: the ADN of early type galaxies?
Sergio Elaskar FCEFyN-UNC, Córdoba, Arg. New theory for chaotic intermittency
Paul Matthew Sutter IAP, Paris, France Cosmic voids as cosmological laboratories
Rory Smith UC, Concepción, Chile The effects of ram pressure and harassment on dwarf galaxies
2015 Mario Díaz UTB, Brownsville, EE.UU. Looking for the first kilonova
Osvaldo Moreschi FAMAF-UNC, Córdoba, Argentina General equations for gravitational lenses in cosmology
Dante Minniti PUC, Santiago, Chile Galactic structure with the VVV Survey
Omar López Cruz INAOE, México Seyfert's Sextet: Timing the Disruption of Galaxies and the Formation of the Intragroup Medium
Georgina Coldwell UNSJ, San Juan, Argentina On the relation between AGN and environment at low redshift
Sergio Cellone FCAG, UNLP, La Plata, Arg. Optical studies of AGN, their host galaxies, and their environments
Noam Liberskind AIP, Potsdam, Germany Shearing and shaping the dwarf galaxies of the Local Group
Gian Luigi Granato INAF, Padova, Italy The early phases of galaxy clusters formation in IR
Cristina Mandrini IAFE, UBA, Buenos Aires, Arg. Solar coronal magnetic field structure and observed energy release locations
Daniel Gomez IAFE, UBA, Buenos Aires, Arg. Reconexión magnética y turbulencia en plasmas espaciales y astrofísicos
Carlos Carrasco CRYA, México Radio emission from Protostellar Jets
Mario Daniel Melita IAFE, UBA, Buenos Aires, Arg. The colors of the objects in the outer Solar System: cosmic radiation, activity and physical collisions
Carlos Colazo OAC, Córdoba, Argentina Discovery of the first ring system in an asteroid
Nelson Padilla PUC, Santiago, Chile Robust estimators for correlation function measurement
Lucas Macri TAMU, Texas, EE.UU. The Hubble constant in the era of precision cosmology
Stefan Gottloeber AIP, Potsdam, Germany Cosmology with the Jubilee and MultiDark simulations
Claudia Mendes de Oliveira IAG, Sao Paulo, Brazil Environmental studies of galaxies with A-PLUS and J-PAS
2016 Sofía Cora FCAG, UNLP, La Plata, Arg. Evolution of galaxy properties: metallicity and colors
Georgina Coldwell UNSJ, San Juan, Argentina Systematic search of extragalactic sources in the VVV survey area
Stefano Cristiani INAF, Padova, Italy The contribution of quasars and galaxies to the UV background
Giuseppe Murante INAF, Padova, Italy Simulating disk galaxies with a novel sub-grid prescription
Gian Luigi Granato INAF, Padova, Italy The central structure of intra-cluster medium: recent encouraging results from simulations
Laerte Sodré IAG, Sao Paulo, Brazil Galaxy evolution with machine learning
Rosa Domínguez Tenreiro UAM, Madrid, Spain Some inputs on galaxy formation and its observational consequences
Lilia Bassino FCAG, UNLP, La Plata, Arg. What can non-standard properties of globular cluster systems tell us on its host-galaxy formation?
María Fernanda Nievas University of Innsbruck, Austria OB stars as laboratories for numerous astrophysical fields
Omar López Cruz INAOE, México SCI-HI: Searching for the first galaxies
Mario Díaz UTB, Brownsville, EE.UU. The birth of gravitational wave astronomy
Arianna Di Cintio DCC, Copenhagen, Denmark Distinguishing CDM from non standard DM models: the vital role of baryon physics
Lucas Macri TAMU, Texas, EE.UU. Extragalactic variables and their application to cosmology
Sergio Dasso IAFE, UBA, Buenos Aires, Arg. Coherent and LSSs in the solar wind, their driven shocks, and effects on galactic cosmic rays
Mario Melita IAFE, UBA, Buenos Aires, Arg. The origin of the ring system of asteroid (10199) Chariklo
Octavio Guilera FCAG, UNLP, La Plata, Arg. Numerical methods in giant planet formation
Gustavo Romero IAR, Buenos Aires, Argentina Gravitational waves: history, detection, and prospects
Edition Year LOC Members
I 2011 Eugenia Díaz-Giménez, Cinthia Ragone Figueroa, Ariel Zandivarez, José Nilo Castellón, Heliana Luparello, Viviana Bertazzi, Diego García Lambas
II 2012 Marcela Pacheco, Andrés Ruiz, Ernesto Zurbriggen, José Nilo Castellón, Dario Graña, Viviana Bertazzi, Eugenia Díaz-Giménez, Diego García Lambas
III 2013 Mario Sgró, Ismael Ferrero, Diego García Lambas
IV 2014 David Algorry, Ernesto Zurbriggen, Andrea Costa, Diego García Lambas
V 2015 Facundo Rodriguez, Adriana Rodriguez Kamenetzky, Elizabeth Gonzalez, Andrea Costa, Diego García Lambas
VI 2016 Mario Abadi, Valeria Coenda, Gian Luigi Granato, Julián Martinez, Cinthia Ragone Figueroa, Viviana Bertazzi, Andrea Costa, Diego García Lambas

External links

References

  1. http://www.fundacionkonex.com.ar/b1038-l-Jose%20Luis-Sersic
  2. http://www.iate.oac.uncor.edu/miembros
  3. http://www.unc.edu.ar/seccion/novedades/2008/mayo/cientificos-de-la-unc-estudian-la-puna-saltena
  4. http://archivo.lavoz.com.ar/08/05/09/secciones/sociedad/nota.asp?nota_id=188054
  5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSJeKmqsmYs
  6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlmHTEC8CGQ
  7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeJ9m6vPRc4
  8. http://www.hoylauniversidad.unc.edu.ar/2012/junio/argentina-tendra-su-cuarto-observatorio
  9. http://astronomiadecordoba.blogspot.com.ar/2010/08/el-instituto-de-astronomia-teorica-y.html
  10. http://www.secyt.unc.edu.ar/unc/boletin_contenido.php?idNota=271
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