I graduated in Physics at the
That year I was accepted as a student in the Group of Planetary Atmospheres (the now called Solar System Department) of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, (IAA), under the supervision of Fernando Moreno and Antonio Molina, who guided my work on radiative transfer in conditions of multiple scattering in the visible and nearIR that led to my thesis. In the summer of 1990 I was a summer research fellow at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), where I did mostly 2-dimensional spectroscopic data reduction and Infrared photometry reduction of Planetary Nebulae.
I got my PhD degree in Physics from the University of Granada in 1994, with a dissertation entitled "Vertical cloud structure in Jupiter and Saturn based on CCD spectrophotometry in the 0.6 to 0.95 microns range".
Afterwards I spent two years of postdoctoral research at NASA/JPL in Pasadena, California, working for Glenn Orton's group at the Earth and Planetary Sciences division. The topics I worked on were the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter and the ground-based support of the Galileo Mission .
From 1997 to 2000
I was a research fellow at the IAA.
Since 2000 I am a permanent staff scientist at IAA.
Application of pioneering high spatial resolution ground-based CCD and nearIR
Investigation of the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in July 1994 from Calar Alto, Spain. As the jovian expert of the Calar Alto Observing team I was responsible for the observational strategy that allowed the first detection of the
Characterization of the Galileo-Probe entry site in Jupiter, an
investigation
that got the cover
of the Journal "Science" in May 10, 1996. In this
investigation we determined basic atmospheric properties of the
probe entry site and determined that the coordinates of probe entry
corresponded to the southern edge of an atmospheric feature that we refer
to as "5-micron hot spot". 5-micron
hot spots have unique properties that
could explain some of the striking results of the probe instruments.
Characterization of the dynamics and recurrence of the jovian
5-micron hot spots and other jovian features
that has allowed succesful remote sensing observations of these
features by the intruments on board the Galileo orbiter. You can take a
look at some of the astonishing images taken by the Galileo orbiter solid
state imager
Different contributions to the analysis and modeling of cometary nuclei physical properties, specially those related to rotation parameters and their interplay with water vapor production rates. This has resulted in several papers listed in the
Detection and analysis of light flashes
on the Moon from impacts of small cometary fragments as well as collision rates
implied for the Earth. A publication in the Journal Nature resulted from these
investigations. Determination of various physical properties of several
Transneptunian Objects.
Other research experience that I can mention include:
Currently,
I have published over 40 papers in refereed journals and presented a similar number of contributions to scientific conferences. Some of them can be found here (or here including abstracts).
Comments or questions: