English (UK)
As it happened in 2014, Calar Alto Observatory has participated on the European Night of the researchers that took place last September 25, 2015. This year the participation consisted in two activities held in the Junta de Andalucía's Govern Delegation in Almería.
In the first session, and the longest one as it took place over the five hours that the Observatory was in touch with the public attending this event, a computer simulation together with a description of the CARMENES spectrograph capacity were shown. CARMENES is a unique instrument that will allow finding similar to earth planets that surrounds other stars. The activity carried out contributed to show the big technological challenge of this project, as well as to demonstrate the progress so far made in the search for extrasolar planets field.
On the second session, the Astronomy Department Head Dr. Santos Pedraz, held a colloquium with the audience, where the most relevant projects of the observatory were presented, both the ones under execution presently, and the ones for the near future using new instrumentation like PANIC o CARMENES. Both of them are a good illustration of the observatory scientific relevance.
At the same time of such sessions, and thanks to the support of "Amigos de Calar Alto" association, the attendant also had the opportunity to see the Moon through a telescope and see its operation.
The European Night of the Researches is a European project of public outreach promoted by the European Commission within the Marie Sktodowska-Curie actions of the 2020 Horizon Program, which is held on more than 350 European cities at the same time since 2005.