Proba-2, smaller than a cubic metre, monitors the Sun from Earth orbit with an extreme ultraviolet telescope called SWAP. It was able to spot Mercury’s transit of the Sun as a small black disk roughly four pixels in diameter.

Video with images taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

SDO studies how solar activity is created and how Space Weather comes from that activity.

• L’ICCUB organitza un acte per seguir en directe els primers resultats sobre la detecció d’ones gravitatòries
• El mayor espectáculo del universo - By R. Emparan (ICREA-ICCUB) at La Vanguardia
• Ecos de las ondas que dieron la razón a Einstein, by R.Emparan (ICREA-ICCUB) at Sinc
• Gravitational Waves, have they been found?, ICCUB Activity

The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain.This Ranking edition was built with data collected during the October 2015 from the public profiles of researchers working in Spain institutions. It is a BETA Ranking of the scientists according to their declared (voluntarily) presence in the Google Scholar Citations database. However, it gives a general overview about the general position of Spanish institutions, showing that the ICCUB (Universitat de Barcelona) is a leading institute in Spain.

A group of scientists working on the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) observatory, have reported the discovery of the most energetic pulsating radiation ever detected from a stellar object: the Crab pulsar. The unexpected observations of these high-energy photons question our knowledge of those tiny stars and opens new challenges for acceleration of particles in extreme media. The discovery has just been published in the last issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics and is led by researchers of the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) at the Institute of Space Sciences (IEEC-CSIC) and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (IEEC-UB).

Energies a thousand times larger than the previously observed

The Crab pulsar is a tiny neutron star, of about 10 km in diameter, which rotates 30 times per second. It behaves like a huge magnet creating extremely large magnetic and electric fields around it. And it creates a beam of light that we receive every time the rotating beam crosses our light of sight, similar to what a lighthouse does, but with energies in order of magnitude larger than the normal light we see. This radiation reaches us with energies comparable to the ones created in i.e. the large hadronic accelerator in the CERN.

In 2011, an unexpected tail of energetic photons was discovered by thetelescopes MAGIC and Veritas. To understand this phenomenon, the MAGIC team performed deep observations of the Crab pulsar, expecting to measure the maximum energy of the pulsating photons. The new observations detected photons with energies a thousand times (x1000) larger than the previously observed. The photons, with energies of more than trillion electron volts (~TeV = 1e12 eV), arrive to the detector every 33 milliseconds, bringing information of the close proximity of the neutron star. Those photons should be the product of electrons and positrons being burnt out in the surrounding of the neutron star, due to the large magnetic field, after being accelerated to relativistic velocities. But how and where this effect is achieved in such a small region challenges our knowledge of physics.

“We performed deep observation of the Crab pulsar with MAGIC to understand this phenomenon, expecting to measure the maximum energy of the pulsating photons”, says Emma de Oña Wilhelmi from the Institute of Space Sciences (IEEC-CSIC) and Principal Investigator of this observation program says. Roberta Zanin from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (IEEC-UB) continues: “The new observations extend this tail to much higher energies, above TeV energies, that is, a hundred times more energetic than the previous measurement, violating all the mechanisms believed to be at work in neutron stars.”

Where and how this TeV emission is created remains still unknown and difficult to reconcile with the standard plasma theories.

MAGIC observatory

MAGIC is a ground-based gamma-ray observatory located on the Canary island of La Palma, Spain. The system of two 17m diameter Cherenkov telescopes is currently one of the three major imaging atmospheric Cherenkov instruments in the world. It is designed to detect gamma rays between tens of Giga-electron-volts (10⁹ eV) and few tens of Tera-electron-volts. MAGIC obtained data from the Crab pulsar during more than 300 hours, and the team analyzed a large set of data obtained between October 2007 and April 2014.

The data and results have been analyzed by a research group led by Emma de Oña Wilhelmi and Diego Torres from the Institute of Space Sciences (IEEC-CSIC), Roberta Zanin and Daniel Galindo Fernandez, both from theInstitute of Cosmos Sciences (IEEC-UB) and David Carreto Fidalgo from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).

The Crab, the most powerful pulsar in our galaxy

Pulsars are rapidly rotating highly magnetized neutron stars. Weighing more than our Sun, yet only several km in radius, these extremely dense objects are embedded in a magnetic field with strengths as high as 10 ⁸⁻¹⁵ G at the surface of the star. This high magnetic field, together with the fast rotation of the star with periods of a few milliseconds, produces beams of electromagnetic radiation, which sweep the sky like a lighthouse.

In particular, the Crab pulsar, created in a supernova explosion that occurred in 1054 AD, is located at a distance of about 6500 light years at the center of a magnetized nebula visible in the Taurus constellation. The Crab is the most powerful pulsar in our galaxy and it is one of the few pulsars detected across all wavelengths, from radio up to gamma rays. In its magnetosphere (or magnetized atmosphere) of only a few thousand kilometers, electrons and positrons are accelerated up to relativistic energies but they are quickly burned in the high magnetic field, emitting radiation that arrives to our telescopes in the form of pulses every 33 millisecond, once for each time the neutron star rotates and meets our telescopic sight. This radiation stops abruptly when the fastest electrons are burnt (that is at ~1GeV=10⁹ eV) below the energy range Cherenkov telescopes can observe. But the new observations with MAGIC unveiled a mysterious, faint but extremely energetic radiation (thousand times larger) beyond this abrupt cutoff which are yet of unknown origin.

"Accelerating science" is an exhibition produced by CERN which many different european cities host with the goal of disseminating the research areas covered by the organization. The main objective is to create awareness among citizens of the usefulness of this kind of research.

It is currently being held at Cosmocaixa Science Museum in Barcelona, where visitors can immerse into an audiovisual experience which explains the universe evolution since the Big Bang to nowadays.

Interactive media is available so that people get to know about CERN research on fundamental particles, the small bricks that form our universe. Visitors will tackle topics such as what is the nature of fundamental particles, which sizes they are, or how they are classified in families conforming what scientist call the Standard Model.

In the exhibition there is also a 3-D reproduction of a real particle detector. It allows visitors to see how particles get through the several layers of the detector and discover which processes occur during collisions.