Phil Charles is Professor of Astronomy at the University of Southampton (United Kingdom) and has visiting professorships at the Universities of Oxford (United Kingdom) and Cape Town (South Africa). He was the Director of the South African Astronomical Observatory from 2004-11, during which time he was involved in the construction and commissioning of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). His research has always involved ground- and space-based observations of cosmic X-ray sources, mostly X-ray binaries, where a compact object (white dwarf, neutron star or black hole) accretes matter

The operation and policies of the “Observatorios de Canarias”, which celebrated their 30th Anniversary this year, were discussed by its CCI (International Scientific Committee) during a meeting held in the La Laguna University yesterday, Tuesday November 17, in Tenerife. All of the signatory parties to the International Treaty “Agreement on Cooperation in Astrophysics” are members of this committee and through it have a say in the discussion and adoption of agreements affecting these Observatories. Apart from the regular business, a series of reports were presented on the operation and plans

Julien Malzac works at the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP) in Toulouse in the south of France, where he holds a Research Scientist position funded by the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique). He graduated in Physics at the Université de Bordeaux (France) and then obtained a PhD in Astrophysics from the Université de Toulouse. After that he worked for several years as a posdoc at the Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera in Milan (Italy) and then at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge (United Kingdom)

Andrea Possenti has been the Director of the INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari, where he became staff astronomer in 2004 after finishing a Physics degree at the Università di Milano and a PhD in Astronomy at the Università di Bologna. He spent a few years in Australia during his post-Docs. He is also co-chair of the SKA pulsar working group

Tomorrow, Friday 13th November at 7.00 pm, at the Museo de la Ciencia y el Cosmos (Museos de Tenerife), Tomaso Belloni of the Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera (Italy) will give a public lecture on "Exploring black holes with a clock". The lecture will be in English with simultaneous interpretation into Spanish.

Tomaso Belloni was a six-year-old kid who wanted to become an astronomer. He succeeded. He graduated in Physics at the Università di Milano (Italy) and then he was a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, near Munich (Germany), and at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). Currently he is an associate professor at the Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera (Italy) and a visiting professor at the University of Southampton (United Kingdom).