The French Ambassador to Spain, Yves Saint-Geours, visited the Headquarters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) yesterday morning, and in the afternoon he visited the Teide Observatory, Izaña (Tenerife) accompanied by the Consul, Francisco de Esteban García, in order to learn about the programmes of scientific collaboration in which France and the IAC are jointly involved.

During his visit to the Institute, the Ambassador was accompanied by the Director of the IAC, Rafael Rebolo, and was told about the projects of research and technical development in which France is participating, such as the European Solar Telescope (EST) which will be the largest solar telescope in the world, and the future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), which will comprise 120 telescopes distributed between the northern and southern hemispheres, to study very high energy gamma rays.

The Ambassador also visited the laboratories and the workshops of the Instrumentation division, and also the Mounting, Integration and Verification (AIV) room where he could see the multiobject spectrograph WEAVE, guided by Vicente Sanchez, and IAC engineer, and Alfonso López Aguerri, a researcher at the Institute. Finally he had the opportunity to greet two French astrophysicists who are working at the IAC, Nicolas Lodieu and Frédérick Poidevin.

Afterwards at the Teide Observatory in Izaña, (Tenerife) he made a tour, accompanied by the IAC Director, of some of the telescopes, such as the QUIJOTE EXPERIMENT which studies the cosmic microwave background, the Carlos Sanchez Telescope (TCS) and the THEMIS solar telescopy whose director, Bernard Gelly, acted as guide for the visit.