Recent Talks

One of the most widely researched topics in Extragalactic Astrophysics
in the last decades is how early-type galaxies have formed their stars
and assembled. In this context, we now have unequivocal observational
evidences about the existence of a numerous population of massive
galaxies which not only had assembled a considerable amount of stars
(~10^{^11} M_sun) by z~2, but were already evolving passively by that
time. These galaxies, the likely progenitors of nearby ellipticals,
are also quite compact in comparison with local galaxies of the same
mass. These result are mainly based on measurements designed to obtain
stellar masses and sizes, and our estimations of these parameters are
now quite robust. Now we need a more secure determination of how
exactly they formed and assembled their stellar mass in just 2-3 Gyr
(z>2). In other words, how was their Star Formation History and which
are the properties (age, metallicity, dust content) of their stellar
populations? And how could they end up with such high masses and small
sizes? In this talk, we will present our results about the SFH (mainly
ages and duty cycles) of massive galaxies at z=1-3 based on the
deepest spectro-photometric data ever taken. These data were gathered
by the Survey for High-z Absorption Red and Dead Sources (SHARDS), a
ESO/GTC Large Program aimed at obtaining R~50 optical spectra of
distant galaxies. This resolution is especially suited to measure
absorption indices such as D(4000), Mg_UV, the Balmer break,etc.. for
galaxies up to z~3 (merging our SHARDS data with HST/WFC3 grism
observations) or emission-line fluxes for faint targets up to
z~6. These measurements represent a big step forward for the robust
determination of the stellar population properties, providing a much
more certain characterization of the stellar content of distant
galaxies than the typical broad-band studies. Our results uniquely
allow to study the stellar content of red and dead galaxies at z~2 and
identify progenitors at higher redshifts, as well as helping to
constrain the models of galaxy formation.

Most massive galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centres, and the masses of the black holes correlate with properties of the host-galaxy bulge component. These empirical scaling relations are important for distinguishing between various theoretical models of galaxy evolution, and they furthermore form the basis for all black-hole mass measurements at large distances. Observations have shown that the mass of the black hole is typically 0.1 per cent of the mass of the stellar bulge of the galaxy. Our spectroscopic survey with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope of 1000 nearby galaxies revealed several compact lenticular galaxies with extremely high velocity dispersions. The first example is NGC1277, which is a small, Re=1kpc, compact, lenticular galaxy with a mass of 1.2×10^11 solar masses. From the stellar kinematics we determined that the mass of the central black hole is 10^10 solar masses, more than 10 per cent of its bulge mass. I will present HST images and IFU spectroscopy of a dozen more compact galaxies that all appear to host extremely big black holes and have Salpeter-like IMFs. These local systems, with distances less than 100 Mpc, could be the passively evolved descendents of the quiescent compact nugget galaxies found at z~2 and the >10e9 Msun quasars that are found at z>6.

ESO is an intergovernmental organization for astronomy founded in 1962 by five countries. It currently has 14 Member States in Europe with Brazil poised to join as soon as the Accession Agreement has been ratified. Together these countries represent approximately 30 percent of the world’s astronomers. ESO operates optical/infrared observatories on La Silla and Paranal in Chile, partners in the sub-millimeter radio observatories APEX and ALMA on Chajnantor and is about to start construction of the Extremely Large Telescope on Armazones.

La Silla hosts various robotic telescopes and experiments as well as the NTT and the venerable 3.6m telescope. The former had a key role in the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe and the latter hosts the ultra-stable spectrograph HARPS which is responsible for the discovery of nearly two-thirds of all confirmed exoplanets with masses below that of Neptune. On Paranal the four 8.2m units of the Very Large Telescope, the Interferometer and the survey telescopes VISTA and VST together constitute an integrated system which supports 16 powerful facility instruments, including adaptive-optics-assisted imagers and integral-field spectrographs, with half a dozen more on the way and the Extremely Large Telescope with its suite of instruments to be added to this system in about ten years time. Scientific highlights include the characterisation of the supermassive black hole in the Galactic Centre, the first image of an exoplanet, studies of gamma-ray bursts enabled by the Rapid Response Mode and milliarcsec imaging of evolved stars and active galactic nuclei. The single dish APEX antenna, equipped with spectrometers and wide-field cameras, contributes strongly to the study of high-redshift galaxies and of star- and planet-formation. Early Science results obtained with the ALMA interferometer already demonstrate its tremendous potential for observations of the cold Universe.

The application of the Fourier transform (FT) technique to high resolution spectra of OB-type stars has challenged our previous knowledge about stellar rotation in stars in the upper region of the HRD. The FT is an old and powerful tool that has being widely used in the case of cool stars, but only very recently applied to massive stars in a systematic way. In this talk I will present the results of the line-broadening characterization of ~250 Galactic OB-type stars (including dwarfs, giants and supergiants with spectral types O4-B9) from the IACOB spectroscopic database. I will show how these analyses have led to a downward revision of previously determined projected rotational velocities in these stars, and have definitely confirmed the presence of a non-negligible extra line-broadening contribution (commonly called macroturbulent broadening) in the whole OB star domain. I will also provide some notes about the importance of these findings on the evolution of massive stars and the detection of stellar oscillations along the lifetime of these important astrophysical objects.

MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) is a 2nd generation Integral Field facility for the VLT. With a field of view of 1x1 arcmin, fine sampling, intermediate spectral resolution and large spectral coverage in the visible, it uses a complex image slicer, twenty-four parallel spectrographs and a large detector area. In addition, MUSE is conceived to work assisted by the Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF), which will enhance notably its performance. MUSE is the result of ten years of design and development by the MUSE consortium — headed by the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon, France and the partner institutes Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP, Germany),  Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen (IAG, Germany),  Institute for Astronomy ETH Zurich (Switzerland), L'Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP, France), Nederlandse Onderzoekschool voor de Astronomie (NOVA, the Netherlands) and ESO.
MUSE has been successfully installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). In this talk it will be presented the instrument, its design and challenges, the integration (both in Europe and Paranal), the first light and first commissioning results.

Any viable theory of the formation and evolution of galaxies should be able to broadly account for the emergent properties of the galaxy population, and their evolution with time, in terms of fundamental physical quantities. Yet, when citing the key processes we believe to be central to the story, we often find ourselves listing from a vast and confusing melee of modelling strategies & numerical simulations, rather than appealing to traditional analytic derivations where the connections to the underlying physics are more tangible. By re-examining both complex models and recent observational surveys in the spirit of the classic theories, we will investigate to what extent the trends in the galaxy population can still be seen as an elegant fingerprint of cosmology and fundamental physics.

The first galaxies are thought to have started the reionization of the Universe, that is the transformation of the cosmic hydrogen from its initial neutral to its present ionized state that occurred during the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang. I will review the key physics of reionization by the first galaxies and highlight the computational challenges of simulating the relevant processes, primarily the transport of ionizing photons. I will introduce the radiative transfer method TRAPHIC that we have developed to address these challenges. I will discuss the application of TRAPHIC in zoomed cosmological simulations of the first galaxies and evaluate the prospects for observing these galaxies with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. I will conclude by presenting first results from Aurora, a new suite of simulations to investigate reionization and galaxy formation across a large range of scales.

To study the extended atmosphere of evolved stars such as Mira-type variables, spectropolarimetry is an innovative tool. For many kinds of stars, it has been used to measure global magnetic fields through circular polarization and the Zeeman effect. However, linear polarization has seldom been used in the past years even though phenomena such as scattering and the Hanle effect can definitely be studied as well, as it is done in solar physics. In this presentation, I am going to describe original results coming from a spectropolarimetric survey of Mira stars with NARVAL@TBL. Such results concern spectral lines like the Balmer lines of hydrogen and calcium lines. More specifically, I will focus on linear polarization and link this polarization to the propagation of the hypersonic radiative shock wave which is typical of Miras' atmospheres. In general, these environements are very dynamical and scattering in an aspherical atmosphere and velocity gradients can induce a strong linear polarization, likely to be further affected by weak magnetic fields. This analysis is very inspired of what is already done with solar spectra. In addition to that, I am going to present exclusive results about the first detection of a surface magnetic field in a Mira star and explain how the shock wave can impact this field. This work is likely to lead to collaborations with other disciplines such as interferometry (geometry of the scattering environement and characterization of the shock) and radio-astronomy (study of the polarization of masers).

On March 17 the team responsible for the BICEP2 experiment, a CMB telescope located in the South Pole, announced the discovery of the primordial B-mode signal in the CMB polarization. This discovery inmediatly had a well-deserved impact in the media world-wide. In fact, it is the first observational confirmation of a prediction from the inflationary model, which was proposed at the beginning of the 80s as a solution for some inconsistencies of the Big Bang model. In this talk I will put this discovery in the context of CMB research, with a historical perspective. I will emphasize the importance of this discovery for Cosmology, and for Fundamental Physics, and will finally comment the prospects for the future, in particular the role of experiments like Quijote that have to confirm this signal.

R Coronae Borealis (RCB) stars are the more prominent group  of high luminosity hydrogen deficient stars that are rich in carbon  and helium. They also show characteristic irregular light drops of  several magnitudes (between 3 and 8 magnitudes) at unpredictable  times, caused by expulsion of self-made clouds of dust. They range in 
surface temperatures from 4500 K to  20000 K. Some of them seem to  have made even such complex molecules like fullerenes (C60) in their  circumstellar regions. Neither their evolutionary history nor the dust 
formation mechanism are well understood. Two scenarios that have been  suggested are that the present stars are a result of merger of two  white dwarfs (CO+He) or a post born-again (AGB) giant that is  surviving after a final helium shell flash. The talk would describe  the RCB properties and highlight the problems and challenges they pose 
in understanding their origins and dust production.