The comet PanSTARRS from the Spanish German observatory at Calar Alto, Almería. Several astronomical objects can be seen. The comet is visible close to the horizon (C/2011 L4). The difuse light (“luz zodiacal”) is a product of the dispersed dust in the Solar System and clearly show that Calar Alto is an excellent site to carry out astronomical observations (credit Gilles Bergond)

Sometimes the scientists are buried with paper work or deep analysis of “cold” data, and we lose the perspective. In those moments I look up. The beautiful ski has the answer: the quest for truth and the answers by Nature are enough.

Like many of the Fulbrights from Santander, I woke up between 6:30 and 7:00 on Wednesday morning and boarded the bus at 8:00 for Zaragoza. I stayed awake and listened to Bob Dylan. It was placid. The earth was dryer and dryer and coming from Santander we rose up and saw mesas and little dark green bushes. It all reminded me of that scene in The Three Amigos where Dusty, Lucky and Ned are stranded in the desert and Dusty’s canteen is the only one with water. The city was warm and clear and sunny.

After a quick shower I went downstairs for lunch. Eric saw me walk in. “Erick,” he said. We embraced and sat down at a table with the Andorran Fulbrights. It was a good lunch of paella and something I forgot, followed by cake, with wine and discussion of our trips, our exploits in Hungary and France, and the movie I had just seen: L’Argent by Robert Bresson. In retrospect, I see how comical it was; such a dark film brought to light in the handsome and happy atmosphere of the lunch salón. The mid year meeting would end better than that flick.

It really started at around 17:55, in the Sala Paraninfo of the Rectorado de la Universidad de Zaragoza. I do not intend to disregard the quality of the talk that officially opened the first 55 minutes of conference. I only mean to highlight the inspiration that I felt with rector Manuel José López Pérez’s final words. He concluded with a bit on José Martí, the Cuban-born Spanish writer and revolutionary, who, having spent time in the United States and Zaragoza, embodied (unintentionally) the founding principle of the Fulbright program: “To increase mutual understanding between people of the United States and of other countries.” I don’t remember the exact words he used, but he said that Martí stressed that independence must be sought from the Spanish Empire, but that the people should remain united; no matter what happens in the political realm, cultural ties are invaluable. It pumped me with the same euphoria I felt when I had first come to Spain. It all came back to that. I understood why it was so essential to have a mid-year meeting: to be reminded of the goals of the program and to be re-energized, ready to make our Fulbright year as successful as possible.

We boarded a bus the next morning to another building of the University. It was another sunny day. I quickly regretted bringing my sweater. The first discussion session was an evaluation of our work. I sat with the some other ETAs in a little circle, my hotel roomy was there, and so was Wendy, my fellow santanderina. It quickly became apparent that despite all being ETAs, we had quite different experiences. Yet our obstacles and concerns unified us. Some of us were entirely dedicated to Global Classrooms (Model UN, basically), while others had not worked with that program all year. Yet all of us had to deal with adapting ourselves to the Spanish classroom. I remember a passionate discussion of how to never give up on that kid who just really doesn’t care but clearly doesn’t have a good home life. The camaraderie was palpable. It seemed quite short; I didn’t want it to end. I think I even said something along those lines, disguising it as a joke. We parted ways.

We walked to yet another building. This one boasted softer seats and a nice wooden presenters’ table with black microphones. Nine went. The topics transcended all of time and the breadth of human knowledge. I remember lots of laughter during Michael Shashoua’s The Economy and Banking Sector of Spain. “Germany has an open bar and Greece is an alcoholic.” Two days later David Shumway would say that the presenters did a fabulous job condensing the content of their research in a mere span of seven minutes, being informative, comprehensible and entertaining. It is for that reason that Maya Kroth’s presentation was so memorable. She is a graduate researcher in Sevilla and Barcelona, studying the siesta. I remember in one part of her presentation she talked about Salvador Dalí and how he would take short naps holding a key over a plate, just dipping into sleep before waking to a metallic clatter so as to access a new level of creativity. Interesting stuff.

We all went our separate ways to find lunch. I was with a group that shared a variety of raciones. We spoke about dogs and other things. One fellow was from Yale. Yale? Harold Bloom? Yep. (Oh, Harold Bloom, Harold Bloom.) It was interesting to hear each person’s story, where they came from and where they went to school. All of these little anecdotes, even stuff as trivial as someone’s afternoon stroll in central park, were memorable and important. I thought of how little images and stories and smells and whathaveyous somehow form someone’s life experience. Like that movie Dreams. My father put a blue hat on me, he gave me a German name.

That evening everyone looked good, suited up and smelly. We were in a big room with tables for a cocktail reception. I remember seeing some folk from Barcelona, where they showed me pictures from orientation. I did not remember those pictures. It felt strange, like I was spying on myself. We all seemed to have changed a bit since then. Most speak better Spanish, some look more confident, and some have even lost weight. For me, I’m more patient. I looked up and around and saw professor Nico Larco. I made a point to talk to him. During the apertura he had said that if we have trouble making a decision to just make a decision, even though way leads on to way it is best to not let your vacillation slow things down to inactivity. What a nice guy. I could see myself hiking or kayaking with him. I was in a suit, twirling my red wine in a glass, and then I was thinking about another movie I had seen and how I had to discuss it with Eric.

The next day was just as productive, just as memorable. It was structured similarly, with a debate session in the morning, followed by presentations and then capped off by a tour. The debate was different, though. The moderator in my group was Sonsoles Valdivia, an exbecaria from Spain. The conversation was focused on cultural differences and how we have adapted. Gillian made an astute observation: when we move somewhere different we are always faced with a degree of inconvenience that we must overcome. Most of our inconveniences, from what I gathered, seemed to concern fully immersing ourselves in our environments with the amount of time we’ve had. We had all met varying degrees of success, but our overall sentiment was that Spanish society is more difficult to become one with, especially when our time is a mere nine months. Camaraderie yet again.

I remember talking with Eric after the final presentations. We were both fired up and feeling intellectual so we made our way back to my room to spend 10 minutes listening to the soundtrack from Drive and doing pushups. The conversations we had had with the other Fulbrights really pushed us. Even the ones that didn’t concern the scholarship, the ones about our past and all the funny stories from childhood or college, and all the comical trips we’d taken on the weekends. It all felt like an exercise in how to make the most of a truly remarkable experience. He kept telling me how inspired he was. “More so than two weeks in Eastern Europe.” Yep.

I recall Nico Larco also saying during the apertura that he wakes up some mornings and is perplexed by the fact that he gets to do this. He’s right: all of this just seems so unreal and it is a blessing not to be taken for granted. Professor Arnoldo Valle-Levinson gave us a Mark Twain quote, also during the apertura: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” To be quite honest, rather than feeling inspired, it instilled me with a sense of urgency, urgency to aprovechar the time that remains. Yet that urgency was not alone; it was grouped with a sense of camaraderie, gratefulness, and reassurance, and this group was not a clustered combination, rather a harmonious unity of sentiments that still pushes me to seize the day and the remaining time I have. We brought nothing and nothing shall we take. I now know that part of the justification for a Mid-Year conference was to knock us out of our groves with inspiring realizations and companionship. If that is the only thing I remember from the conference it shall suffice.

Well, they were and they weren’t.  For one thing, they were dressed up.  One of the most exciting parts of the conference, for the students, is the opportunity to wear fine business dress — in their suits, blazers, pencil skirts, they looked the part of young ambassadors.   But of course, the change was more than skin-deep.  The students’ growth in critical thinking skills throughout the course of the Global Classrooms program is astounding.  Between four mini-conferences (for our youngest students only), two regional conferences (in Torrelavega, Camargo, and Santander), and the “big show” at the Fundación Botín in Santander, our “delegations” took full advantage of the opportunity to speak, debate, and solve global problems in a public forum.

As Fulbrights, we were responsible for running the show.  At each conference, several grantees sat on the dais — the three officials who sit at the front of the room and control the flow of debate, the order of speakers, and the voting procedures.  It was a hard job, but rewarding.  I served as the director of the World Health Organization committee in the Santander conference, and then as the Chair of the UNESCO committee.  With over sixty delegations, each wanting to give their 90 speech, it was a challenge to keep the proceedings going and give each student their fair chance to participate.  But listening to the students read the resolutions was a rare treat.  The WHO recommended ideas as diverse and practical as  creating mobile hospital units to serve rural areas in undeveloped countries, creating an international plan to create more water treatment centers in impoverished areas, or creating new prevention and education campaigns for diseases like HIV.

The conferences were the students’ chance to apply their knowledge, but of course the real results happened in the classroom.  Our students all studied the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations’ commitment to ending various problems related to extreme poverty by 2015.  Our second year ESO students (ages 13-14) studied education and gender inequality, third year ESO studied global health problems, and fourth year — the Global Classroom experts, in their third year of the program — studied extreme poverty, hunger, and international cooperation. Based on a post-survey I conducted in my classes, 60% of my students said they would almost definitely read an article about the global issues they studied if they came across it in the newspaper.  So in addition to developing students’ critical thinking faculties, public speaking abilities, and research skills, Global Classrooms creates global citizens.

Because of the incredible efforts of grantee Michael Hochberg, we were honored by the presence of former United States Ambassador to the UN Sichan Siv.  Siv spoke to the students in the opening ceremonies about his experiences as a refugee from the Cambodian killing fields and his rise to one of the most powerful humanitarian posts in the world, and later did an extensive interview with a group of students who had trained at the Fundación Botín for video production and journalism.  Something he told us stuck with me after the conference was over; it seemed to capture the spirit of this year’s project perfectly.  “When you do well,” he told us, “don’t forget to do good.”  Although I fear the grammatical subtleties may have been lost on our youngest students, that quote felt right to me.  And I think it’s because I knew that after leading Spain’s future leaders through months of intense study and perspective-taking, we’d prepared them to do just that.

I wasn’t nervous, but I couldn’t stop thinking of the word crispación.  The way it sounded, crisp, like a layer of ice closing over the room.  The room was La Asamblea de Madrid, the parliament for the Community of Madrid: lacquered wood gleaming, glass, and bright lanterns hanging from high ceilings.  The word crispación reflecting off the shiny surfaces.

It was a Tuesday night, February 27^th.  Over two hundred 14 and 15-year-olds were in suits and ties and nice shoes, trying to sit still in their swivel seats.  Looking down the long arc of the table where I sat, I could see all twelve students representing IES Fortuny: all girls, all remarkably intelligent, dedicated and brave.  My and Becky’s students!

The Global Classrooms Madrid Model United Nation’s Conference would not officially meet in committees until the following day, Wednesday, February 28^th, but Becky Haley (the other Fulbright English Teaching Assistant at Fortuny), I, and our twelve delegates had been preparing for the conference for so long that to be in the very room where the closing ceremony would take place in just 24 hours was making me nervous.

My feet were dangling off the oversized chair and I tried to hold them still.  I wondered if I had done a good job leading Global Classrooms at Fortuny.  I had been to a few Model United Nations (MUN) conferences when I was an undergraduate.  I remembered that parliamentary procedure was a mouthful for me: referring to yourself in the third-person, having to second and vote on every procedural decision, the excess of adverbs in formal speech.  I remembered hours scouring through the CIA World Fact Book, the Encyclopedia, World Bank Data, and various news sources and UN reports in an effort to compose a sound position paper.  I remembered the giant committees where I was swallowed in a sea of raised placards.  I don’t remember particularly enjoying myself.

When I had to design lesson plans for Global Classrooms, which I led two days a week in lieu of Social Science and English, I was overwhelmed by the amount of ground I had to cover within a period of five months: conducting research, keeping up with current events, public speaking, debating, problem solving, essay writing, improvising, etc.  The list of skills required to succeed in MUN seemed interminable.

At the same time, I remembered how bored I sometimes felt at MUN conferences in college and I wanted to make Global Classrooms as fun for my students as possible.  From the beginning, I gave my students the freedom to explore their own interests: I let them choose the Millennium Development Goal they wanted to research and the weekly news article they had to summarize.  Sensationalist articles about brain-eating amoeba were popular, but some students used the opportunity to learn more about serious issues that interested them like gender inequality or the illegal drug trade.  I also tried to make public speaking fun by incorporating some improv theater games, and conducting practice debates on controversial topics like sexual education and the social media.

Despite my best efforts, there were some weeks when I felt ready to give up: some of my students were not completing any of their homework, others were plagiarizing, almost all of them were complaining about the amount of time they had to put into Global Classrooms.  I wasn’t sure if I was too boring or too strict or too demanding or too unprepared or all of those things.

As the months passed, however, I found little surprises waiting for me around the corners.  One day, a student who had never turned in an assignment and who never participated in class came up to me and apologized for his behavior.  Then his friends joined him and apologized too!  Another day, a student who had been struggling in my class wrote me an email saying it was his first year in the bilingual program but he was trying his best to succeed.

When the time came to choose six students from my class to represent Fortuny at the Madrid Conference, it felt like an icebreaker gone wrong: So you’re stuck on a remote tropical island in Las Acacias and you can only bring six students with you!  Who do you select?

I’m not sure what my answer reveals about my personality, but I ended up choosing the six students who wanted to go to the conference the most.  Amidst all the speaking and writing skills I had been drilling into my students over the course of many months, the only thing I couldn’t drill into anyone was aspiration, drive, and the ineffable, extra “oomph.”

So there we were: me, and the choosen twelve, the inspired, the driven, the oomphy, all seated in the hemiciclo, uncomfortably warm.  I turned to the two students sitting closest to me and asked them to tell me about their Global Classroom experience, what they learned.  At first they went on about their research on orphans and vulnerable children, what they had learned about the world, its complexity.

“We have also learned the Tuvalu exists!” one of the girls declared, “It’s in Oceania!”

“With this,” the other one said, “people are going to know where Tuvalu is.  My mother knows now!”

Had they learned anything about themselves? I asked

“Yes,” the first one said, seriously.  “A few months ago, I didn’t know how to speak in front of other people.  But now I’m not nervous about what people are going to think because I have my ideas and I know how to share them.”

She was telling the truth.  This soft-spoken girl who used to offer her statements like questions was looking me in the eye, and I was the one who was nervous.  I should have said I was proud of her, but I don’t know if I did.

I closed my reporter’s notebook and the opening ceremony began, and the next day my students all did amazingly well at the conference, and it ended, and we went back to Fortuny on a bus, and the day after that I went in to work again at 8:30 a.m.  Global Classrooms ended, and I still don’t know if I did a good job leading it or not, but I do know where Tuvalu is now, and I’m not nervous anymore to teach.

Se reunirán 43 auxiliares de conversación de centros bilingües de Madrid, 18 de Cantabria,1 del IE Bussines School  y 5 Andorra; 22 investigadores predoctorales; 5 profesores de universidad; y 3 estudiantes de Masters en el IE Bussines School.

Nuestros becarios disfrutarán de un programa de actividades organizado por la Comisión en colaboración con la Universidad de Zaragoza .

Todo ello es posible gracias a los organizadores y la colaboración de: Universidad de Zaragoza, Gobierno de Aragón, Ayuntamiento  de Zaragoza,  Embajada de Estados Unidos, Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperación, Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Comunidad de Madrid, Fundación Marcelino Botín e IE Business School. No sin olvidar la inestimable ayuda de muchos Fulbrighters españoles que se han ofrecido desinteresadamente a moderar los grupos de trabajo.

Esta iniciativa se enmarca en la decidida apuesta de Abengoa por continuar su inversión en el ámbito de la innovación, el desarrollo sostenible y la investigación contribuyendo a formar a una nueva generación de líderes e investigadores en el campo de las energías renovables. El compromiso de la Comisión Fulbright y Abengoa rubrica el convencimiento de que la inversión en una formación de excelencia es el mejor estímulo para convertir a nuestros jóvenes licenciados en protagonistas de la mejora de la competitividad de la economía española.

Más información de la convocatoria: http://fulbright.es/convocatorias/ver/1390/ampliacion-de-estudios/2014-2015

On behalf of the Fulbright Commission, we are excited to welcome Abengoa as our new Fulbright program sponsor for the Fulbright graduate studies scholarship. The three Abengoa-Fulbright scholarships, which will be awarded during the 2014-2015 academic year, will give preference to Andalusian university students who wish to study a Master or PhD in the United States within the field of renewable energy, environmental studies, and other related fields.

This initiative demonstrates Abengoa’s dedication and commitment toward continuing investment in the field of innovation, sustainable development.  The initiative also seeks to contribute research that will be used to train a new generation of leaders and researchers in the field of renewable energy. Through the commitment of both the Fulbright Commission and Abengoa, we strive to further endorse the belief that investing in excellent academic training is the best way to prepare our young graduates to take on central roles toward improving their opportunities in the highly competitive Spanish economy.

For more information: http://fulbright.es/convocatorias/ver/1390/ampliacion-de-estudios/2014-2015

A finales de enero, un grupo de becarios Fulbright españoles tuvimos la oportunidad de participar en un seminario en Atlanta sobre el Movimiento por los Derechos Civiles. En total, rondábamos el centenar entre becarios de más de 50 países, ex becarios americanos y personal de IIE.

Como parte del programa, visitamos el museo en honor a Martin Luther King, oriundo de Atlanta, y tuvimos charlas y encuentros con personas que participaron activamente en el movimiento en los años 60.

Uno de ellos fue Lonnie King Jr, amigo de Martin Luther King y activista por los derechos civiles. Lonnie King fue uno de los promotores del Manifiesto por los Derechos Humanos, un documento que publicaron un grupo de jóvenes estudiantes de las  seis universidades de Atlanta en marzo de 1960. El manifiesto tuvo más eco de lo que inicialmente creían, y varios periódicos del país secundaron la iniciativa incluyéndolo en sus primeras páginas.

Lonnie King nos regaló una copia del manifiesto y nos relató como vivió él los comienzos del movimiento por los derechos civiles que abanderó Martin Luther King. En el documento, se denunciaba la exclusion que padecían los afroamericanos y la segregación racial que asolaba el sur de Estados Unidos, y se reivindicaba la igualdad de derechos para todos.

Así, hace no tanto tiempo, en 1960, las escuelas públicas de los estados del sur estaban divididas, con sesiones dobles para niños blancos y negros. Asimismo, los  afroamericanos no podían ir al cine, y debían ceder su asiento en los autobuses a los ciudadanos blancos. Los afroamericanos no eran admitidos en las universidades, tenían sus propios hospitales, –con menores recursos–, y hasta sus propios lavabos. Los blancos no bebían de las mismas fuentes que los negros. La segregación era total.

Personalmente, Lonnie King dejó huella en mí. A sus 77 años y ya debilitado en salud, King te relataba de forma apasionada la lucha que emprendieron esos años. La emoción y la pasión con la que contaba su historia,  la historia de muchos otros afroamericanos, te atrapaba y te hacía meterte de lleno en el relato.

Como parte del seminario, también participamos en otras actividades de inmersión con gente de Atlanta. Estuvimos ayudando en un proyecto comunitario en el colegio público Parklane y cenamos con familias locales.

El seminario me confirmó lo que ya sabía. Que EEUU es un país hospitalario, diverso, tolerante, y que ser becario Fulbright es un privilegio y una oportunidad que te cambia la perspectiva desde la que miras al mundo y a los otros.

Last week, the students of IES José Luis Sampedro released an online newspaper called the WhatsApp Times. The publication can be viewed by clicking here. The following is a story of my journey that led to the release. Enjoy!

Each person has a different opinion on whether luck exists or not. Some say all good things that happen in life are a result of luck. Others insist that luck does not exist. I prefer to believe the wisdom of an ancient proverb that reads, “Luck never gives; it only lends.” In May 2012, after graduating from Pitzer, luck lent me the opportunity to be a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Spain. As the summer started, I became filled with excitement as I thought of the hard and rewarding work ahead. Each day while I would sit in the reception desk at the San Francisco Mayor’s press office, I would think to myself: I wonder what the kids that I teach will be like. In the past, I had developed and implemented lesson plans to teach English as a Second Language to Mexican day laborers in Southern California. I had also taught private lessons in both math and Spanish but I had never been with a group of twenty to thirty students as either a teacher or teaching assistant. Little did I know at this time that Fulbright would really lend me the opportunity to work with smart, funny, and creative high school students. In September, after orientation, I settled down in the center of Madrid in a neighborhood called Barrio de Las Letras (Neighborhood of Literature) with two Spaniards, one German, and one Italian. From my home base, I would travel 30 minutes by commuter rail train to the city of Tres Cantos where the students and teachers awaited me.

In the second week of September, I received my class assignments for the year. I would be a primary teacher for Global Classrooms, also known as Model United Nations, and an English teaching assistant for music and art classes. Within the first month, I felt right at home. The students were eager to learn English and I was excited to teach them. The administration and faculty were both friendly and welcoming. As a teacher in Global Classrooms, I have had the opportunity to get to know my students very well. The small class size has allowed me to effectively teach students basic debating skills, how to form ideas and write essays, how to conduct research, and public speaking competencies. Thanks to their hard work for the last five and a half months, my students, along with kids from seventeen other public high schools in the region of Madrid, will go to the Global Classrooms Conference this upcoming week. At the conference, Sampedro students will act as representatives of the countries of Somalia, Mozambique, Argentina, Belarus, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia, and debate solutions to solve the problem of global water scarcity. In my art classes, I have had the opportunity to help students become critical thinkers. I have led debates that have helped the students think about the role of the geometry in making their art. I also have given lessons on English vocabulary for them to use to talk to me about their drawings. In my music classes, I have delivered varied lectures on American music and its roots. I have taught the students about anthems, both national and sports, in the United States and Spain. I have also done activities that strengthen understanding of more difficult concepts, like rhythm and dynamics. All in all, I have been very impressed with the students inside the classroom but also outside the classroom there have been many successes.

Over the last few months, I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with ten to fifteen students in the production of the WhatsApp Times, the first-ever English-language online-based newspaper at Sampedro. The first edition, which came out this past week, includes articles that range from breaking news, such as student responses to a new fence built around the southern perimeter of the institute, to opinion articles, such as a review of the bilingual program, to a column written by a student who reviews books for other students. The twenty-page first edition of the paper has allowed students to practice their English writing, speaking, and listening skills outside of their typical English courses as a supplement to the current bilingual program at the high school. Feedback from the students has been largely positive. One student wrote to me in an email last week, “Writing for the Whatsapp Times has been a really valuable experience. Although we write in English, the atmosphere has made me very confident. The WhatsApp team is awesome and makes the paper great.” The strong support from the school principal and the bilingual director have been instrumental to the success of the publication. As funds are tight around the school and all around the country, the paper is only online. That being said, this has only made the WhatsApp Times team more creative. Next week, we will prepare a campaign to publicize the newspaper that includes a contest on social media platforms, such as Tuenti and Twitter, to encourage fellow students to follow current news at the school. In addition, the school has hosted the WhatsApp Times and many other interesting projects on their website. As of this writing, students are working on their articles for the next issue. This project would not have been possible without the hard work of the students, faculty, and administrators.

The idea for the newspaper developed long before coming to Europe. Once at the school, I developed relationships with students and administrators that proved crucial in order to get participation and support. Finally in November, I worked with my bilingual director to write a proposal for the creation of the newspaper and present it to the principal. Upon approval from the principal, I worked with English teachers to advertise the project. The results were fantastic. After the first meeting, I put together a team of fifteen journalists and photographers. With this team, we worked hard over weekends and holidays to write questions, transcribe interviews, translate Spanish to English, write articles, peer edit, and finally, place articles in the newspaper. Although I asked for a lot from the students, their determination is clear as the same students showed up to the meeting for the second issue and they brought their friends. Thank you to the Fulbright Commission in Spain and the Regional Community of Madrid for lending me the opportunity to work with such gifted and talents students, faculty, and administrators.

Rio Bauce is a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship, or Auxiliare de Conversación del programa Fulbright, at Instituto de Educación Secundaria José Luis Sampedro in Tres Cantos. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in American Government from Pitzer College in Claremont, California, 45 minutes east of Los Angeles. In his spare time, he is an avid cook, careful musician, novice soccer player, and serious language exchange participant. He regularly updates his blog called the BauceBeat that you can visit at http://baucebeat.wordpress.com. Rio is also a guest contributor to the Pitzer Fulbright Blog, which hosts the adventures of Pitzer College graduates of 2012 who have embarked on Fulbright Fellowships in several countries. He can also be reached with any questions or comments at baucer@gmail.com.

Desde el descubrimiento del primer exoplaneta en 1995, los investigadores han ido desvelando que hay otros sistemas planetarios muy diferentes al nuestro. Primero, se descubrieron planetas mucho mayores e incluso mucho más calientes que los de nuestro Sistema Solar. Recientemente, gracias a la gran precisión del telescopio espacial Kepler, se han detectado planetas del tamaño de la Tierra e incluso bastante menores. Ahora se ha hallado por primera vez un planeta más pequeño que Mercurio.

El telescopio espacial Kepler, lanzado en el año 2009, pretende determinar la abundancia en nuestra Galaxia de planetas rocosos en zonas habitables alrededor de estrellas similares al Sol. Kepler monitoriza de manera constante unas 150 000 estrellas en busca de los tránsitos de sus cuerpos planetarios (los tránsitos son equivalentes a los eclipses en el Sistema Solar).

Comparación de los tamaños de diferentes planetas, incluyendo los tres de Kepler 37 (NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech)

Durante 978 días, Kepler obtuvo estas señales de tránsito, indicadoras de la existencia de tres planetas, en las series temporales de datos fotométricos de una estrella parecida al Sol, aunque más fría, denominada Kepler-37 (también conocida como KIC 8478994 y KOI-245). Se estima que tiene el 70 % del tamaño del Sol.

El planeta ahora descubierto, Kepler-37b, es el más interno de este sistema de tres. Debido a su tamaño extremadamente pequeño, similar al de la Luna, y a su superficie altamente irradiada, Kepler-37b es, muy probablemente, un planeta rocoso sin atmósfera ni agua, similar a Mercurio.

Para confirmar que los cambios de brillo aparente se debían a planetas orbitando alrededor de Kepler-37 no sirvieron, al contrario que en otros casos, las velocidades radiales ni las variaciones en los tiempos de tránsito, por lo que los investigadores exploraron posibles escenarios astrofísicos (llamados «falsos positivos») que podrían imitar el tránsito de un planeta entorno a Kepler-37. Emplearon para ello un programa informático específico y de gran complejidad denominado BLENDER.

Además, se utilizó otra técnica observacional con el instrumento AstraLux, instalado en el telescopio de 2.2 metros del Observatorio de Calar Alto (Almería) que brindó imágenes de muy alta resolución de esta estrella, de calidad similar a las que se pueden obtener con el telescopio espacial Hubble. Con la técnica utilizada, denominada lucky imaging [imágenes afortunadas], hemos logrado descartar un gran número de falsos positivos, es decir, hemos eliminado configuraciones como la presencia de otras estrellas o las manchas estelares. Estos fenómenos pueden confundirse con un planeta, ya que causan efectos similares en los datos recibidos, por lo que solo con una observación precisa es posible descartar que se trate de objetos estelares en lugar de planetas.

Parte de las imágenes se obtuvieron durante el tiempo garantizado español del Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (Observatorio de Calar Alto, dependiente del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas CSIC y de su homólogo alemán, la Sociedad Max-Planck MPG), tiempo que gestiona el Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC). Se pone así de manifiesto la eficiencia de los programas dedicados, que hacen uso de manera intensiva del tiempo de telescopio en proyectos que intentan ampliar las fronteras del conocimiento.

Este trabajo es fruto de una gran colaboración internacional, dedicada a la explotación de los datos extraordinarios que proporciona el satélite Kepler, pero también de datos obtenidos por telescopios situados en tierra. Sin las observaciones adicionales de los telescopios terrestres no habría sido posible interpretar adecuadamente la información de Kepler. Es el binomio observatorio espacial más terrestre el que produce las sinergias requeridas para lograr este tipo de impresionantes descubrimientos, que hace unos pocos años estaban más allá de la imaginación más osada. Nuevamente, muestran la necesidad de mantener una adecuada financiación a los observatorios terrestres.

El caso de Kepler-37b ofrece un ejemplo muy claro de los resultados que se pueden obtener con telescopios de la clase dos metros, como el veterano reflector Zeiss de Calar Alto, cuando se equipan con instrumentos de tecnología avanzada como AstraLux y se ponen a disposición de una comunidad científica interconectada internacionalmente y que participa desde la primera línea en la ciencia de vanguardia.

Mi agradecimiento a Natalia Ruíz y a David Galadí por contribuir a la redacción de este texto