The aim of this project is to provide a Laser Launch Telescope for the Laser Guide Star Facility of the Adaptive Optics system of the GTC telescope. This will allow to increase drastically the capacity of GTC to make high spatial resolution science. The Laser Launch Telescope is in charge of expanding the laser beam and projecting it into the
Large volume cryostat for integration and verification of cryogenic scientific instrumentation
This specific equipment will allow to carry out tests in cryogenics and high vacuum conditions of large electro-opto-mechanical systems. The first instrument that will benefit from this infrastructure will be HARMONI, the optical spectrograph / IR developed by ESO as first light instrument for the future Extremely Large European Telescope (ELT)
Cosmic microwave background from the OT: QUIJOTE and other experiments
The main goal of this project is to consolidate and to guarantee the scientific leadership of those CMB experiments operating from the Teide Observatory (OT), and in which the IAC’s cosmology group is involved. On the one hand, the QUIJOTE experiment and the new generation of associated microwave instrumentation (MFI2 and the TMS spectrograph). On
Mineralogical characterization of primitive asteroids and space exploration
The scientific objective of this project is the compositional characterization of the primitive asteroids, which we will carry out through three actions: 1. Participation in the two space missions that will visit and study near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) of primitive type. 2. The compositional characterization of the collisional families and groups of
Massive stars are key agents in the chemical and dynamic evolution of the Universe. The information that comes to us from early epochs of the Universe comes from galaxies dominated by the presence of massive stars. Therefore, understanding the evolution mechanisms of massive stars is fundamental to understanding the Universe. These mechanisms