XXVIII Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics
Titulo
La Laguna, Tenerife (Spain) - 7th to 16th November 2016

Presentation

The XXVIII Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics, organized by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), focuses on Solar System Exploration. The School welcomes a maximum of 50 PhD students and young Post-Docs, and provides a unique opportunity for the participants to broaden their knowledge in this field of Astrophysics. Participants of the Winter School will have the opportunity to display their current work by presenting a poster. The duration of the school, including the visits to the observatories, is equivalent to a total of 45 hours (4.5 academic credits).   

Scientific Rationale

There has been a dramatical improvement of our understanding of the Solar System in the last decade. We are now able to perform numerical simulations of quite dynamically complex systems thanks to the improved computational resources and theoretical advances; measurements and experiments in the laboratory have enhanced our understanding of meteorites, asteroids, planetary surfaces, and space environment; the use of new observational techniques and the coming of both ground- and space-based dedicated surveys have increased exponentillay the available observational data. In addition, the list of space missions that are currently in flight or accepted for implementation to explore our Solar System is quite large, and includes missions designed for planetary exploration (Mars Odyssey, Cassini, Juno, MOM, etc), missions focused in asteroids and comets (Dawn, Hayabusa 2, Rosetta, OSIRIS-REx), and specific missions to study our Moon (Artemis, LRO). Space missions are returning fascinating images of other worlds, demostrating a great diversity of physical properties, geological features, and compositions. To be fully exploited, these enormous amount of scientific data needs for a solid scientific background, a good knowledge on data reduction and analysis, and a certain degree of familiarity with data archiving. 

This Winter School aims to bring together in a relaxed working atmosphere a number of the leading scientists working in this field and PhD students and recent postdocs. It will tackle many aspects of Solar System Exploration, covering the fundamentals, the hot-topics on dynamical evolution, planetary and asteroid surfaces, and planetary atmospheres, and the most recent results from space missions. This course will provide also graduate students and young researchers a training workshop on data analysis and data archiving. 

Organizing Committee

  • Julia de León
  • Javier Licandro
  • David Morate
  • María Jesús Arévalo
  • Rafael Rebolo