João Mira-Gomes, Portuguese Ambassador to Spain, visited the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) headquarters in La Laguna this morning, together with Vicente M. Álvarez Gil, Portuguese Consul in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and several members of his team, accompanied by Rafael Rebolo, Director of the IAC, and Mahmoudreza Oshagh, senior postdoctoral researcher. During their tour of the facilities, they were informed about the different projects that are being developed in the framework of the Portuguese-Spanish collaboration.
The IAC participates in several consortiums and scientific collaborations with Portuguese institutions. One outstanding cooperation is with the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) of Portugal and the University of Porto (U.Porto) in the ESPRESSO project, a spectrograph installed at ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, whose two Co-Principal Investigators are Rafael Rebolo (IAC) and Nuno Santos (IA-U.Porto).
The IAC is also collaborating with the University of Coimbra (UC) in the framework of the European Solar Telescope (EST) project. Both institutions have agreed to lead the development of an instrument, based on an Integral Field Unit (IFU) system, for polarimetric observations in the near-infrared (NIR) of the EST. In addition, the IAC works together with Portuguese scientists on the PLATO and EUCLID missions of ESA.
