It's a window into the universe that hasn't been opened until now." This is how they define from the Astrophysical Observatory of Javalambre (OAJ), in the province of Teruel, the taking of the first data for their star project: a large and unprecedented three-dimensional mapping of the cosmos with which progress can be made in the understanding of the nature of dark energy.
Under the name J-PAS (Javalambre Physics of the Accelerating Universe Astrophysical Survey), the researchers participating in this project – about 250 from 18 different countries – will glimpse thousands of square degrees of the sky from Pico del Buitre during the next decade.
For mapping, the OAJ has the JST250 telescope – a wide-angle 2.5 meter main mirror – and the JPCam panoramic camera, the second largest astronomical camera in the world, with more than 1.2 billion pixels. In addition, the JPCam integrates 56 unique optical filters in the international panorama, which allows the device to capture multi-colored images and obtain detailed information of all objects in the field of view.
"We will observe about 500 or 600 million stars and galaxies, and we will extract physical information from each of these objects, such as their type (crash, galaxy, supernova, quasar), age, chemical composition, distance, or whether it is approaching or he moves away", explains Antonio Marín-Franch, deputy director of the OAJ, by phone. It is "unique" information that, he says, will be made available to the international scientific community and will enable a "huge" number of scientific projects in all branches of modern astrophysics.
The first observations have arrived after an arduous process of verification, fine-tuning and optimization of all these devices by the staff of the Center for Physics Studies of the Cosmos of Aragon (Cefca). This center, managed by the OAJ, leads the project together with the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), the National Observatory of Rio de Janeiro and the University of São Paulo.
Since the summer, the first 15 square degrees of the map have been observed, the equivalent of an area of 60 full moons. Although this is just the beginning, the extracted data already includes information for a million stars and galaxies. "The scientific community was anxious to be able to explore this data", says Marín-Franch.
Because of its large field of view, each JCam image takes up approximately 1GB and can capture hundreds of images every night of work. This "tsunami of data" has led Cefca to develop from scratch in Teruel its own data center for storage, management and calibration before validating and making them public.
From the Teruel observatory, they also highlight the synergies that this mapping can generate with other centers such as the large Canaries telescope, with which they have signed a collaboration agreement. “Thanks to our panchromatic approach, we can identify extraordinarily rare or hard-to-find objects here. They can then take images of the object in question with exquisite quality and make an even more detailed characterization. The complementarity is absolute", asserts the deputy director.
The history of astronomy shows that the great astronomical maps made in the past marked a before and an after in the knowledge of the cosmos.
According to Carlos López San Juan, deputy scientific director of Cefca, the J-PAS will be "the largest and most accurate multicolor photometric mapping, capable of providing spectral information from any region of the universe" and, as such, "aspires to become a benchmark for 21st century astronomy”.
