Luís Calçada

Gliese 667 Cc

luiscalcada — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:08:06 +0000

A sunset seen from the super-Earth Gliese 667 Cc. The brightest star in the sky is the red dwarf Gliese 667 C, which is part of a triple star system. The other two more distant stars, Gliese 667 A and B appear in the sky also to the right. Astronomers have estimated that there are tens of billions of such rocky worlds orbiting faint red dwarf stars in the Milky Way alone.

More information http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1214/
Credit:
ESO/L. Calçada

Moullinex – Sunflare videoclip

luiscalcada — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:49:05 +0000

Concept – Dinis Costa, Luis Calçada, Luis Clara Gomes, Francisco Costa
Direction – Luis Calçada, Dinis Costa
Script – Dinis Costa
Photography/Video – Sergio Santos, Luis Calçada
Technical Production – Luis Calçada
Editing – Marcia Costa, Dinis Costa
Actors – Nuno Lopes, Sónia Balacó

Production – Moullinex/Luis Clara Gomes/Luis Calçada

Kamp! – Cairo (Moullinex Remix)

luiscalcada — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 15:50:58 +0000

OUT 9.9.2011 on Discotexas with remixes from Social Disco Club and JBAG

Hubblecast 43: Hubble and Black Holes

luiscalcada — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 08:55:32 +0000

For centuries, scientists imagined objects so heavy and dense that their gravity might be strong enough to pull anything in – including light. They would be, quite literally, a black hole in space.

But it’s only in the past few decades that astronomers have conclusively proved their existence.

Today, Hubble lets scientists measure the effects of black holes, make images of their surroundings and glean fascinating insights into the evolution of our cosmos.

Credit:

ESA/Hubble

Visual design and editing: Martin Kornmesser
Animations: Martin Kornmesser and Luis Calçada
Written by: Oli Usher and Sarah Reed
Presented by: Joe Liske (Dr J)
Narrator: Gaitee Hussain
Images: NASA, ESA, ESO, Sloan Digital Sky Survey (David W. Hogg, Michael R. Blanton), Lockheed Martin, Google.
Music: movetwo
Directed by: Oli Usher
Executive producer: Lars Lindberg Christensen

More Hubblecasts
More ESOcasts

Moullinex – Catalina videoclip

luiscalcada — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:17:42 +0000

Music video for Catalina, a track off the Chocolat EP by Moullinex, released in January on Gomma Records. Please see it in HD!

Done with Kinect + Processing + Cinema 4D + After Effects.

Credits

Concept: Luis Clara Gomes, Luis Calçada
Visuals: Luis Calçada
Programming: Luis Clara Gomes
Editing: Francisco Costa
And a big thank you to Joana Nobre and Paulo Raimundo.

Check here for more info, an Howto, and download of source files.

Around the web:

Alice & Andy

luiscalcada — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 23:32:06 +0000

Interactive application for the iPad

Production: Science Office
Text: Mariana Barrosa and Lee Pullen.
Illustrations: André Roquette and Mafalda Martins.
iPad App Design: Luís Calçada, André Roquette, Mariana Barrosa and Pedro Russo
Music: Moullinex
Programming and Development: TECField

Moullinex – Chocolat EP

luiscalcada — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:39:10 +0000

Moullinex – Tear Club, from the Chocolat EP (Maxi), released by Gomma on January 7th 2011 (Cat#: Gomma DT 024). Head on to soundcloud to listen to the remaining tracks. Also, fire up beatport if you want to download it.

Written and produced by Luis Clara Gomes (in collaboration with Luis Calçada and Bruno Cardoso)

Bass guitar: L. Calçada/L. C. Gomes
Guitars: B. Cardoso/L. C. Gomes/L. Calçada
Voice: L. C. Gomes/Colleen Sharkey
Flute: Hermann Bauerecker

Disc around young star

luiscalcada — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:08:19 +0000

Dusty disc closely encircling a massive baby star. Astronomers have been able to obtain the first image of such a disc, providing direct evidence that massive stars do form in the same way as their smaller brethren — and closing an enduring debate. The flared disc extends to about 130 times the Earth–Sun distance — or astronomical units (AU) — and has a mass similar to that of the star, roughly twenty times the Sun. In addition, the inner parts of the disc are shown to be devoid of dust.

Credit:
ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser

Dark Gamma-ray Bursts

luiscalcada — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:54:09 +0000

Dark gamma-ray burst in a star forming region. Gamma-ray bursts are among the most energetic events in the Universe, but some appear curiously faint in visible light. The biggest study of these dark gamma-ray bursts to date, using the GROND instrument on the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla in Chile, has found that these gigantic explosions, while puzzling, don’t require exotic explanations. Their faintness is now fully explained by a combination of causes with the most important being the presence of dust between the Earth and the explosion.

Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Westerlund 1

luiscalcada — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:41:27 +0000

In this video we fly through the young star cluster Westerlund 1 and close in on the strange magnetar that lies within it. This cluster contains hundreds of very massive stars, some shining with a brilliance of almost one million suns. European astronomers have for the first time demonstrated that the magnetar — an unusual type of neutron star with an extremely strong magnetic field — was formed from a star with at least 40 times as much mass as the Sun.

Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Moullinex – Superman EP

luiscalcada — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:38:45 +0000

Videoclip for Moullinex’ new EP, Superman.

Credit:L. Clara Gomes/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser

Beta Pictoris b

luiscalcada — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:24:41 +0000

Astronomers have been able to directly follow the motion of an exoplanet as it moves from one side of its host star to the other. The planet has the smallest orbit so far of all directly imaged exoplanets, lying almost as close to its parent star as Saturn is to the Sun. Scientists believe that it may have formed in a similar way to the giant planets in the Solar System. Because the star is so young, this discovery proves that gas giant planets can form within discs in only a few million years, a short time in cosmic terms.

Also, animation here:

Credits: ESO/L. Calçada

Superstorm on Exoplanet

luiscalcada — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:02:25 +0000

Astronomers have measured a superstorm for the first time in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, the well-studied “hot Jupiter” HD209458b. The very high-precision observations of carbon monoxide gas show that it is streaming at enormous speed from the extremely hot day side to the cooler night side of the planet. The observations also allow another exciting “first” — measuring the orbital speed of the exoplanet itself, providing a direct determination of its mass.

Also, an animation here:

Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Cloudviews 2010

luiscalcada — Thu, 20 May 2010 19:09:40 +0000

Cloud computing conference Cloudviews 2010, which took place in Porto, Portugal in May 2010.

Visuals: Luis Calçada
Sound: Paulo Raimundo

ELT infographic

luiscalcada — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:44:57 +0000

ESO is currently designing the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), which, at 42 metres in diameter, will be the world’s telescope when it becomes operational in 2018.

Credit:ESO/L. Calçada

1 Minuto de Astronomia

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:31:13 +0000

Opening title for the TV show 1 Minuto de Astronomia.

Credit: L. Calçada/A.Roquette. Music: P.Raimundo

Protoplanetary disk

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:17:54 +0000

An impression of a baby star still surrounded by a protoplanetary disc in which planets are forming. Using ESO’s very successful HARPS spectrograph, a team of astronomers has found that Sun-like stars which host planets have destroyed their lithium much more efficiently than planet-free stars. This finding does not only shed light on the low levels of this chemical element in the Sun, solving a long-standing mystery, but also provides astronomers with a very efficient way to pick out the stars most likely to host planets. It is not clear what causes the lithium to be destroyed. The general idea is that the planets or the presence of the protoplanetary disc disturb the interior of the star, bringing the lithium deeper down into the star than usual, into regions where the temperature is so hot that it is destroyed.

Credit:L. Calçada

Black hole binary

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:14:44 +0000

A stellar-mass black hole in the spiral galaxy NGC 300. The black hole has a mass of about twenty times the mass of the Sun and is associated with a Wolf–Rayet star : a star that will become a black hole itself. Thanks to the observations performed with the FORS2 instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have confirmed an earlier hunch that the black hole and the Wolf–Rayet star dance around each other in a diabolic waltz, with a period of about 32 hours. The astronomers also found that the black hole is stripping matter away from the star as they orbit each other. How such a tightly bound system has survived the tumultuous phases that preceded the formation of the black hole is still a mystery.

Credit: L. Calçada

Gliese 667 – extrasolar planet

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:09:10 +0000

On 19 October 2009, the team who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, better known as HARPS, the spectrograph for ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope, reported on the incredible discovery of some 32 new exoplanets, cementing HARPS’s position as the world’s foremost exoplanet hunter. One of these is surrounding the star Gliese 667 C, which belongs to a triple system. The 6 Earth-mass exoplanet circulates around its low-mass host star at a distance equal to only 1/20th of the Earth-Sun distance. The host star is a companion to two other low-mass stars, which are seen here in the distance.

Credit: L. Calçada

Corot9b – exoplanet

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:04:40 +0000

The transiting exoplanet Corot-9b. Discovered by combining observations from the CoRoT satellite and the ESO HARPS instrument, Corot-9b is the first “normal” exoplanet that can be studied in great detail. This planet has the size of Jupiter and an orbit similar to that of Mercury. It orbits a star similar to the Sun located 1,500 light-years away from Earth towards the constellation of Serpens (the Snake). Corot-9b passes in front of its host star every 95 days, as seen from Earth. This “transit” lasts for about 8 hours. Like our own giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, the planet is mostly made of hydrogen and helium, and it may contain up to 20 Earth masses of other elements, including water and rock at high temperatures and pressures.

Credit: L. Calçada

Betelgeuse

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:53:41 +0000

The supergiant star Betelgeuse as it was revealed thanks to different state-of-the-art techniques on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, which allowed two independent teams of astronomers to obtain the sharpest ever views of the supergiant star Betelgeuse. They show that the star has a vast plume of gas almost as large as our Solar System and a gigantic bubble boiling on its surface. These discoveries provide important clues to help explain how these mammoths shed material at such a tremendous rate. The scale in units of the radius of Betelgeuse as well as a comparison with the Solar System is also provided.

Credit: L. Calçada/M.Martins

Corot-7b exoplanet

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:50:54 +0000

The exoplanet Corot-7b is so close to its Sun-like host star that it must experience extreme conditions. This planet has a mass five times that of Earth’s and is in fact the closest known exoplanet to its host star, which also makes it the fastest — it orbits its star at a speed of more than 750 000 kilometres per hour. The probable temperature on its “day-face” is above 2,000 degrees, but minus 200 degrees on its night face. Theoretical models suggest that the planet may have lava or boiling oceans on its surface. Here my impression of how it may look like if it were covered by lava. The sister planet, Corot-7c, is seen in the distance.

Credit: L. Calçada

Moullinex – I lost my voice (wmw remix)

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:40:13 +0000

Who Made Who “I lost my voice” remix.

Produced by Luis Clara Gomes. Bass guitar Luis Calçada.

Cloud Computing Conference ’09

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:34:17 +0000

Welcome video for the cloudviews.org 2009 conference, an event on cloud computing which took place in Porto, Portugal.

Credit: L.Calçada Music:P.Raimundo

ALMA observatory

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:15:01 +0000

A rendering of the ALMA Array on the Chajnantor plateau, in an extended configuration. Using Terragen2 and Cinema4D.

Credit: L. Calçada

A second animation can be seen here:

Frequency combs

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:10:19 +0000

Science Magazine cover proposal: Laser comb developed for astronomy. Such a laser comb is necessary to act as a ‘ruler’ for calibrating the new, extremely precise spectrographs that will be needed in the future to search for Earth-like planets or measure the expansion of the Universe. deeper within it. This article was featured in Science Magazine in September 2008 and part of the team was, among others, 2005 Physics Nobel Prize Winner Theodor W. Hänsch.

Credit: ESO/L.Calçada

Pluto’s atmosphere

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:05:27 +0000

Astronomers have gained valuable new insights about the atmosphere of the dwarf planet Pluto. The scientists found unexpectedly large amounts of methane in the atmosphere, and also discovered that the atmosphere is hotter than the surface by about 40 degrees, although it still only reaches a frigid minus 180 degrees Celsius. These properties of Pluto’s atmosphere may be due to the presence of pure methane patches or of a methane-rich layer covering the dwarf planet’s surface.

Also, an animation here:

Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Moullinex – Sebastien Tellier Kilometer remix

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:02:45 +0000

James Bond at Paranal

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 20:56:34 +0000

ESO’s Paranal Observatory has been used as the key location for Quantum of Solace, the latest film in one of the most successful movie franchises – that of renowned secret agent 007. This clip was created to celebrate this. Be sure to see the movie and witness VLT’s residencia (the hotel in the base camp where the astronomers stay) being exploded to pieces.

Credit: L.Calçada/M. Kornmesser. Music: P.Raimundo

Magnetar

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 20:51:15 +0000

Astronomers have discovered a possible magnetar that emitted 40 visible-light flashes before disappearing again. Magnetars are young neutron stars with an ultra-strong magnetic field a billion billion times stronger than that of the Earth. The twisting of magnetic field lines in magnetars give rise to ‘starquakes’, which will eventually lead to an intense soft gamma-ray burst. In the case of the SWIFT source, the optical flares that reached the Earth were probably due to ions ripped out from the surface of the magnetar and gyrating around the field lines.

Credit: ESO/L.Calçada.

Paranal Observatory flyby

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 20:46:15 +0000

This 3D animation simulates a flyby over the Very Large Telescope in Chile and towards the Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit: ESA/Hubble/ESO/M.Kornmesser/L.Calçada

Moullinex -1stracklove

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 20:39:57 +0000

Premiere track in colaboration with Moullinex.

This was produced by Luis Clara Gomes, and me on the bass guitar. It’s going to be release on an EP on June 2010, by GOMMA records.

Binary Blackhole

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 20:33:54 +0000

Black holes studied by the astronomers, using ULTRACAM attached to ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The systems — designated Swift J1753.5-0127 and GX 339-4 — each contain a black hole and a normal star separated by a few million kilometres. That’s less than 10 percent of the distance between Mercury and our Sun. Because the two objects are so close to each other, a stream of matter spills from the normal star toward the black hole and forms a disc of hot gas around it. As matter collides in this so-called accretion disc, it heats up to millions of degrees. Near the black hole, intense magnetic fields in the disc accelerate some of this hot gas into tight jets that flow in opposite directions away from the black hole. The orbital period of Swift J1753.5-0127 — just 3.2 hours — is the fastest found for a black hole. The orbital period of GX 339-4, by contrast, is about 1.7 days.

Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

ALMA telescope

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 20:27:33 +0000

A vision of the near-future ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array. CG models of the antennas were composited on a photograph of the future location of the observatory, in the Chilean Atacama desert, 4000m high. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada. Photo: H.H.Heyer

Fomalhaut exoplanet – animation

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 09:17:46 +0000

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered an extrasolar planet using direct visible-light imaging for the first time. The strange world is far-flung from its parent star, is surrounded by a colossal belt of gas and dust, and may even have rings more impressive than Saturn’s.

Credit:ESA/NASA/L.Calçada

Gamma-Ray burst

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 09:10:34 +0000

The gamma-ray burst GRB 080319B was so intense that, despite happening halfway across the Universe, it could have been seen briefly with the unaided eye. Astronomers from around the world combined data from ground- and space-based telescopes to conclude that the burst’s extraordinary brightness arose from a jet that shot material almost directly towards Earth at almost the speed of light – the difference is only 1 part in 20 000. This 0.4 degree wide jet is contained within another slightly less energetic jet about 20 times wider. It also appears that the jets were aimed almost directly at the Earth.

Credit:ESO/L.Calçada

ESOcast intro

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 02:17:37 +0000

ESOcast is a video podcast series dedicated to bringing the latest news and research from ESO.

Credit: L.Calçada Music: L.C.G.//Moulinex

Stellar structure

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 02:13:48 +0000

The structure of a solar-like star and a red giant. The two images are not to scale – the scale is given in the lower right corner. It is common to divide the Sun’s (and solar-like stars’) interior into three distinct zones: The uppermost is the Convective Zone. It extends downwards from the bottom of the photosphere to a depth of about 15% of the radius of the Sun. Here the energy is mainly transported upwards by (convection) streams of gas. The Radiative Zone is below the convection zone and extends downwards to the core. Here energy is transported outwards by radiation and not by convection. From the top of this zone to the bottom, the density increases 100 times. The core occupies the central region and its diameter is about 15% of that of the entire star. Here the energy is produced by fusion processes through which hydrogen nuclei are fused together to produce helium nuclei. In the Sun, the temperature is around 14 million degrees. In red giants, the convection zone is much larger, encompassing more than 35 times more mass than in the Sun.

Credit: ESO/L.Calçada

Brown dwarf

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 02:06:58 +0000

Astronomers found jets coming out from a 24 Jupiter-mass brown dwarf, showing that outflows are rather ubiquituous in the Universe and leading to the prospect that that young giant planets could also be associated with outflows.

Credit: ESO/L.Calçada

Supernova SN2006X

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 01:59:19 +0000

The favoured configuration for the progenitor system of SN2006X before the explosion. The White Dwarf (on the right) accretes material from the Red Giant star, which is losing gas in the form of stellar wind (the diffuse material surrounding the giant). Only part of the gas is accreted by the White Dwarf, through a so-called accretion disk which surrounds the compact star. The remaining gas escapes the system and eventually dissipates into the interstellar medium. The Red Giant star has a radius about 100 times larger than our Sun, while the White Dwarf is about 100 times smaller than the Sun.

Credit: ESO/L.Calçada

Einstein – Anno mirabilis (2005)

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 01:53:44 +0000

Albert Einstein – Annus mirabilis. 2005 was the 100th aniversary of the year which most people consider Albert Einstein’s Annus mirabilis, in which he published his most important scientific papers about photoelectric effect, Brownian motion and the special theory of relativity.

Credit: L.Calçada/F.Costa Music: P.Raimundo (2005)

Fomalhaut – Exoplanet

luiscalcada — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 01:36:01 +0000

Credit:ESA/NASA/L.Calçada