NEWS
Relocation of ASIM on ISS
On January 10th, the ASIM payload installed outside the Columbus module on the International Space Station (ISS) was carefully relocated, using the robotic arm Canadarm2.
Juno Data Indicates 'Sprites' or 'Elves' Frolic in Jupiter's Atmosphere
New results from NASA's Juno mission at Jupiter suggest that either "sprites" or "elves" could be dancing in the upper atmosphere of the solar system's largest planet. It is the first time these bright, unpredictable and extremely brief flashes of light - formally known as transient luminous events, or TLE's - have been observed on another world. The findings were published on Oct. 27, 2020, in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
Confirmado un nuevo fenómeno eléctrico en la atmósfera: destellos azules por descargas eléctricas frías
Con ayuda de un instrumento de la estación espacial internacional y sensores terrestres, investigadores del Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía han detectado por primera vez la emisión simultánea de destellos azules y pulsos de radio en nubes de tormenta. Estos raros eventos se producen por descargas eléctricas formadas por filamentos de plasma o aire ionizado que, en lugar de ser calientes como las de los rayos, son frías.
Génesis e importancia de las descargas eléctricas en nubes
El blog www.divulgameteo.es nos dedica un espacio para la divulgación en su sección METEOROTECA.
Su autor, José Miguel Viñas, físico del aire y comunicador científico, además explica de forma sencilla, precisa y detallada los secretos de la electricidad atmosférica en este hilo de twitter.
Desde aquí nuestro agradecimiento.
Proyecto de Iniciación a la Investigación e Innovación en Secundaria en Andalucía
Análisis de descargas electrostáticas con un espectrógrafo de alta velocidad
El proyecto PIIISA surge de la colaboración entre la Delegación de Educación en Granada, el Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) y la Universidad de Granada (UGR) con el fin de ofrecer al alumnado granadino de secundaria una forma moderna e innovadora de aprender e interaccionar con la ciencia.
45th Annual European Meeting on Atmospheric Studies by Optical Methods
The 45th Annual European Meeting on Atmospheric Studies by Optical Methods, (45AM) was organised in Kiruna by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) on 27-31 August 2018. Dr. María Passas Varo gave a talk as an invited speaker introducing GALIUS: the ultra-fast spectrograph for the study of lightning. PhD. student Thi Ny Kieu showed GALIUS first results in a poster.
SAINT SUMMER SCHOOL: July 2-13, 2018 Barcelona, Spain
After one year of the start of the SAINT action, the first summer school was held at the UPC in Barcelona (Spain). The school had a two-week program that included the ESR Workshop, participation of the 2018 campaign, invited scientific and industry lectures, meetings, tutorials, experiments and field activities. The whole TRAPPA group attended this summer school.
EUROPEAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION MEETING · 8-13 April 2018, Vienna, Austria
Dr. Javier Pérez Invernón participated in the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in April 2018, Vienna, Austria.
Seminar by Professor Hugh J. Christian at IAA-CSIC Lightning from its base to space
Lightning has been studied for centuries with surprisingly meager progress since the early breakthroughs of Franklin. There are numerous reasons for this lack of progress: lightning is complex, it is very energetic with large peak power - hard for in-situ probes to survive, it is spatially and temporally sparse-hard to place a sensor in an optimal location. However, modern technological advances and innovations have led to new remote sensing capabilities that are starting to peal back layersleading to improved understanding, while at the same time, revealing new mysteries.
Radio interview with Dr. Francisco Gordillo Vázquez (minute 15:18)
[...] la Agencia Espacial Europea (ESA), ha lanzado un módulo de investigación denominado ASIM que está siendo instalado en estos momentos en la Estación Espacial Internacional. Francisco Gordillo, investigador del Grupo de Plasmas Transitorios en Atmósferas Planetarias del Departamento del Sistema Solar en el Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, el IAA, nos da los detalles de este proyecto.
Radio interview with Dr. Francisco Gordillo Vázquez and Dr. Alejandro Luque Estepa
[...] Se llaman TLE, Eventos Luminosos Transitorios. Pero los TLE no son los únicos eventos de la atmósfera. Algo mucho más bestia ocurre ahí arriba: explosiones de rayos gamma, el rango de radiación más energético, muy intensas y de apenas unos pocos segundos de duración.... los TGF. Con Francisco Gordillo y Alejandro Luque, del IAA hablaremos sobre toda esta fenomenología tan curiosa y desconocida. Y también del proyecto ASIM, que hace sólo unas semanas lanzó un módulo al espacio para estudiarlo.
Una misión de la ESA para estudiar las descargas eléctricas en la alta atmósfera
Investigadores del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) colaboran en el análisis de los datos de la misión y mediante el apoyo desde tierra con instrumentos propios.
[...] "La detección, hace tres décadas, de intensos destellos en la mesosfera, una región de la atmósfera situada a partir de los 50 kilómetros por encima del suelo, supuso una sorpresa porque se creía que ésta carecía de actividad", apunta el investigador del CSIC Francisco Gordillo, que trabaja en el Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía. [...]
SpaceX Dragon rendezvous and capture at the International Space Station
Capture is scheduled 04/04/2018 at 13:00 CEST. Docking will start at 14:30 CEST.
The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor is a climate observatory for the International Space Station - ISS. It is developed by the ASIM consortium for ESA. Initial phases started in 2004 to 2009, and development started in 2010. ASIM was launched April 2nd, 2018, with CRS-14 Falcon-9/Dragon by SpaceX.
Radio interview with Dr. Francisco Gordillo Vázquez (minute 24:24)
The 3rd April 2018, Radio Euskadi station interviewed Dr. Francisco J. Gordillo Vázquez on the occasion of the launch of the Atmosphere Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM), to be installed within the Columbus module of the ISS.
Radio interview with Dr. Francisco Gordillo Vázquez (minute 7:00)
The 2nd April 2018 the Spanish radio station COPE interviewed Dr. Francisco J. Gordillo Vázquez on the occasion of the launch of the Atmosphere Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM), to be installed within the Columbus module of the ISS.
The full audio can be downloaded here.
ASIM Launch the 2nd April 2018 20:30 UTC (22:30 CET)
The Atmosphere Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) launches off Cape Canaveral to observe lightning, sprites and terrestrial gamma ray flashes from the International Space Station. All systems are ready for SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral to ISS.
Follow the ASIM Team twitter account and watch the successful launching by clicking here.
One of our recordings at the AGU Instagram Account
A new study in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres presents the first high spectral resolution (0.24 nm) spectra of sprites, luminous events in the upper atmosphere induced by lightning. The spectra were recorded in Europe in the summers and falls of 2015 and 2016 and during January 2017.
SAINT SUMMER AND WINTER SCHOOLS
The Winter School is the first time that the network is brought together and that all the Ph.D. students get a chance to meet each other. The purpose of the school is therefore two-fold: to introduce the students to the basic physics and methods of the SAINT network, and to have students and scientists get to know each other. To remind us all about the boundary conditions for the school, I extract the research objectives of SAINT from the proposal and the learning objectives of the school.
PEDRO MARTÍNEZ, EL PUEBLO DE LOS RAYOS
La franja entre Mágina y Sierra de Arana, la que más impactos nube-tierra registra en Granada.
LOS RAYOS DEL CAMBIO CLIMÁTICO
Una investigación realizada por la Universidad de Berkeley predice un 50 % más de relámpagos para finales de este siglo debido al incremento de la temperatura por el calentamiento global.
XXXVI REUNIÓN BIENAL DE LA REAL SOCIEDAD ESPAÑOLA DE FÍSICA · 17-21 July 2017, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Our group participated in the 33rd International Conference on Phenomena in Ionized Gases held in Estoril, Portugal, in July 2017 with three oral communications on the Symposium on Plasma Physics by Dr. Francisco J. Gordillo Vázquez (invited talk), Javier Pérez Invernón and Alejandro Malagón Romero, respectively. We also showed our main results in two posters by Dr. Marta González García and Dr. María Passas Varo, respectively.
XXXIII INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PHENOMENA IN IONIZED GASES · 9-14 July 2017, Estoril, Portugal
Our group participated in the 33rd International Conference on Phenomena in Ionized Gases held in Estoril, Portugal, in July 2017 with an oral communication by Javier Pérez Invernón and two posters by Dr. Francisco J. Gordillo Vázquez and Alejandro Malagón Romero, respectively.
V REUNIÓN NACIONAL DE CIENCIAS PLANETARIAS Y EXPLORACIÓN DEL SISTEMA SOLAR (CPESS-5) · 6-8 June 2017, Madrid, Spain
Javier Pérez Invernón participated with an oral communication in the 5th National Meeting in Planetary Sciences and Solar System Exploration held in Madrid, Spain, in June 2017.
EUROPEAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION MEETING · 23-28 April 2017, Vienna, Austria
Dr. Francisco J. Gordillo Vázquez, Dr. Alejandro Luque Estepa and Javier Pérez Invernón participated with an oral communication in the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in April 2017, Vienna, Austria. Alejandro Malagón Romero also presented some results of our research with a poster.
12TH FRONTIERS IN LOW TEMPERATURE PLASMA DIAGNOSTICS · 23-27 April 2017, Zlatibor, Serbia
Dr. Francisco J. Gordillo Vázquez participated as an invited speaker (Ground-based optical spectroscopy of plasma phenomena in the upper atmosphere of the Earth) in the 12th biennial Frontiers in Low Temperature Plasma Diagnostics (FLTPD) workshop, organzised by the University of Belgrade (Faculty of Physics and Institute of Physics).
NOCHE EUROPEA DE LOS INVESTIGADORES · 30th September 2016, Granada, Spain
We invite you to discover the human side of research through a direct contact and conversation with experts. It is the European Researchers' Night, which we will celebrate next September 30 in the eight Andalusian capitals for the fifth consecutive year and at the same time that other 250 European cities.
Earth & Space Science News devotes an article to lightning's signature on Venus, 10 August 2016
How energetic would lightning on Venus have to be to be detected by sensors? A new model sheds light.
Cover in Applied Optics, 10 August 2016
Located in Barcelona, Spain, Granada Sprite Spectrograph and Polarimeter is a ground-based spectrographic system for the analysis of the spectroscopic signature of transient luminous events occurring in the mesosphere of the Earth.
3rd TEA-IS SUMMER SCHOOL · Copenhagen · June, 27th - June, 29th · 2016
Third TEA-IS Conference in Thunderstorm Effects on the Atmosphere-Ionosphere System. Celebrating 5 years of TEA-IS Network collaborations and looking forward great expectations of the ASIM and TARANIS missions.
Alejandro Luque obtains an ERC Consolidator Grant to study Lightning Propagation, February 2016
eLightning is a research project about one of the most familiar but also least understood phenomena in nature: the lightning discharge. We will use what we know about discharges in the upper atmosphere to look for answers to some of the most pressing questions about lightning: why do most lightning channels advance discontinuously? what is the source of X- and gamma rays emanating from lightning and thunderclouds?
Cover in IAA Magazine, February 2016
As electric activity influences the atmosphere chemical composition, so it does on the climate. And there are several ways to study this phenomenon.
Earth & Space Science News devotes an article to elves in atmospheres of gaseous planets, 15 July 2015
Gaseous planets may have huge luminous rings caused by lightning. What business do elves have in the upper atmospheres of gas giants? Plenty, it seems. The enormous ring-shaped phenomena triggered by lightning may occur on Jupiter, Saturn, and exoplanets.
TEA-IS SUMMER SCHOOL 2014
Thunderstorm Effects on the Atmosphere-Ionosphere System (TEA-IS) is an ESF Research Networking Programme which started in May 2011 and will last until May 2016. So far there are more than 100 scientists from nine countries involved. This is the second summer school organised by this ESF project.
XXXI INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PHENOMENA IN IONIZED GASES (ICPIG), JULY 14 - 19, 2013, GRANADA (SPAIN)
This prestigious conference has been the forum for discussion of nearly all fields in plasma science since 1953, from the fundamentals of the interaction of charged particles with molecules to plasma chemistry, surface treatment and thin film technology, plasma medicine, light sources, plasma assisted combustion, plasma material processing, atmospheric and stellar plasmas, environmental protection and pollution control, plasma aerodynamics, and non-thermal plasmas in fusion devices.
TEA-IS SUMMER SCHOOL 2012
Thunderstorm Effects on the Atmosphere-Ionosphere System (TEA-IS) is a recentlty approved ESF Research Networking Programme which started in May 2011 and will last until May 2016. So far there are more than 100 scientists from nine countries involved.
19TH EUROPHYSICS SECTIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS OF IONIZED GASES, JULY 15-19, 2008, GRANADA (SPAIN)
The ESCAMPIG, an international conference being celebrated since 1973, is celebrated biannually and covers a wide range of basic and applied plasma science. In this new edition of ESCAMPIG, the International Scientific Committee has renovated the conference topics that range from atomic and molecular processes in plasmas and plasma-surface interaction to self-organization in plasmas or to the new research lines with low and high pressure plasma sources. Research in natural plasmas such as space plasmas and the emerging research field of discharge plasmas in the Earth upper atmosphere are also covered.