UPC researchers will observe 77,000 stars with the Chilean 4MOST telescope
Alberto Rebassa, a professor at the UPC’s Department of Physics and at the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), and Odette Toloza, a researcher at the Federico Santa María Technical University (Chile), will lead a team of 30 researchers from 18 institutions around the world to observe and analyse the spectra of 77,000 binary stars. They will use the European Southern Observatory’s 4MOST telescope, located in Chile.
Feb 01, 2022
Alberto Rebassa, a professor and researcher at the Department of Physics of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC) and at the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), and Odette Toloza, a researcher at the Federico Santa María Technical University (USM), in Chile, will lead an international team of scientists to observe 77,000 binary stars—a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Using the 4MOST telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, the team of scientists will analyse the spectra of binary stars that are composed of a solar-type star and a white dwarf, the most common stellar remnant, the last stage of a star’s life. Currently, however, only a few thousand spectra of this type of binary are available for the study.
With the observations of 4MOST, the research team will study a whole series of scientific unknowns, such as the evolution of compact binary stars, the progenitors of thermonuclear supernovae; the age-metallicity relation in the Milky Way, which is a key observation tool for understanding how our galaxy formed and how it has evolved chemically over time; and the physical and magnetic properties of solar-type stars. The team is made up of 30 researchers from 18 institutions and universities in the United Kingdom, Germany, Chile, China, Italy and the United States.
Majorcan astrophysicist Alberto Rebassa-Mansergas is an assistant professor at the UPC’s Castelldefels School of Telecommunications and Aerospace Engineering (EETAC), a researcher at the Department of Physics and a member of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group (GAA). GAA researchers Roberto Raddi and Santiago Torres are also members of the research team.
Winning time on 4MOST
Rebassa and Toloza’s project is one of the projects selected by the ESO’s 4MOST (4-metre Multi-Object Spectrograph Telescope) consortium, an initiative to observe more than 20 million celestial objects in the southern hemisphere and analyse a whole series of open scientific questions in modern astronomy.
4MOST is a second-generation instrument that will be installed on the ESO’s VISTA (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) telescope, located in Cerro Paranal, Chile, which will commence operations in early 2024 for a minimum of five years. The new instrument will provide VISTA with the ability to perform large spectroscopic surveys, capturing stellar spectra—energy fluxes per wavelength—in virtually the entire visible range of 2,400 objects simultaneously, that is, an average of 18,000 objects overnight.
According to the team behind the design and construction of 4MOST, the instrument will provide the scientific community with an optical spectroscopy mapping facility that will make a significant contribution to many areas of science.
A total of ten large-scale projects, called Consortium Surveys, account for 70% of the time of future 4MOST observations: millions of stars will be observed to better understand the formation and evolution of the Milky Way. The remaining 30% will be observing time for Participating Surveys, a dozen projects that have been carefully selected. The project led by Rebassa and Toloza is precisely one of the projects that has been awarded observing time on the telescope.
