Centro de Estudios de Fisica del Cosmos de Aragon

The Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón is a Research institute in Teruel, Spain. Established in 2008 as a private foundation of public initiative. by the Government of Aragon. Besides research in astronomy, and leading several large astronomical surveys, CEFCA is the operator of the Astrophysical Observatory of Javalambre. The primary research interests at CEFCA are in Stellar evolution, Time-domain astronomy and Galaxy evolution.

WWW cefca.es

History

CEFCA was officially established in July 2008 with Mariano Moles Villamate as the founding director.
The founding of CEFCA is intertwined with that of the OAJ, see the history of OAJ for more.
Some key dates in CEFCA's history include:2008: CEFCA is established.2009: First meeting of CEFCA Steering committee and launch of project.2010: CEFCA moved to its current location.2014: OAJ was recognized as a national.2016: Javier Cenarro Lagunas became the director.

Location

CEFCA is geographically located in the following installations within the Province of Teruel.

The CEFCA headquarters are located in the historical center of Teruel. In a building that was previously owned by the Teruel branch of the Bank of Spain.
The Astrophysical Observatory of Javalambre, which is located on the "Buitre" peak of the Sierra de Javalambre.
CEFCA's main High performance computing facility is located in the Government of Aragon building of Teruel.
CEFCA's main outreach facility is GALACTICA, which is an astronomy museum as well as facilities for Amateur astronomy. It is located on the base of the Pico de Buitre in the Arcos de las Salinas village.

Academics

CEFCA's academic activity can be classified in the following fields

Graduate program

CEFCA's graduate program is composed of multiple levels:

Summer internships:
* CEFCA provides funding for M.Sc students from any Spanish university to stay in Teruel for July and August to conduct a short research project with CEFCA's research staff.
* Google Summer of Code projects that are available internationally and are done remotely.
M.Sc final project: this is a one-year project conducted by M.Sc students in Spain. CEFCA's research staff propose research topics for the students of any Spanish university. The students conduct their research in their host university, but under the supervision of the CEFCA research staff.
PhD program: A number of PhD students from any university are regularly funded and trained by CEFCA for the full 4-year period of a PhD course in Spain and are based in Teruel. Previous universities that CEFCA has cooperated with for this purpose include University of Zaragoza and Complutense University of Madrid.

Astrophysics

CEFCA's astrophysics research can be categorized in the following fields; primarily using data from the Astrophysical Observatory of Javalambre ; but not limited to them.

Wide-field Astronomical surveys: design and conduction of wide-field, multi-filter astronomical surveys. This includes surveys like J-PAS, J-PLUS, Mini-HAWKs, J-ALFIN, and .
Astroinformatics: Including the data processing, archiving and analysis of the large volume the wide field imaging data that is produced by the observatory. The OAJ has a dedicated Department for Processing and Archival of Data for this purpose which contains staff researchers, technical astronomers and engineers. Furthermore, DPAD is also in charge of the ARRAKIHS mission data reduction pipeline.
Time-domain astronomy: imaging large portions of the sky in various times allows the study of asteroids in the Solar System, variable stars within the Milky Way, or supernova in other galaxies
Stellar and galaxy evolution: the very wide field of view, and the many filters of the surveys conducted at OAJ allow accurate measurements of thousands of stars and galaxies in each exposure.