Neorockers and Dart….Focus on IAC

What has Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) being doing for DART?

Neorocker Julia de Leon, planetary scientist at the IAC, is coordinating (together with Dr. Simone Ieva, from INAF) the Characterisation part of the Observations Working Group. Right now, she is not at her office in the Canary Islands, but in Chile, as she will be observing the DART impact using X-SHOOTER at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the European Southern Observatory.

This is a coordinated effort: Cyrielle Opitom, from University of Edinburgh will be a visting astronomer using MUSE – Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, while Simon Green, from the Open University in UK  (using VISIR) and Stefano Bagnulo, from the Armagh Observatory in UK (using FORS2) will be observing remotely.

And yes, they will be using the 4 Unit Telescopes at the same time!!

Meanwhile, in the Canarias, Neorocker Javier Licandro (Senior Planetary Scientist at IAC), has been involved in the Earth based observational campaign of Didymos using the Canary Islands observatories. He contributed with observations with several telescopes of Didymos, in particular with data obtained with the world largest optical telescope GRANTECAN (GTC), a 10.4m telescope located at the “Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos” in the La Palma island that helped to determine the physical properties of the Didymos system and its surface composition. He is now observing Didymos with smaller telescopes and will continue doing it after the impact of DART to help determine its effects.