Have you ever wanted to visit Chile, a world-class center for optical astronomy?

This project will give you the opportunity to be part of a state-of-the-art observational program at the Very Large Telescope in the northern part of the country. Using CRIRES, a new adaptive optics instrument with both spectroscopic and imaging capabilities, Franck Marchis and his team will be studying the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Io, one of the most exotic objects in the solar system.

The VLT consists of a cluster of four 8.2 m telescopes and an interferometer, located on top of Cerro Paranal in Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the driest regions on Earth. Cerro Paranal is a 2,635 m high mountain, about 120 km south of the town of Antofagasta. This observatory also sports an unusual hotel, designed for the extremely dry environment of the Atacama. It’s built inside the mountain, with an artificial oasis growing around a swimming pool.

Franck is keen to study and monitor the volcanic activity of Io, the most volcanically active place in the solar system. In 2002, using the Keck 10 m adaptive optics system, he witnessed the most energetic volcanic eruption ever seen. The eruption took place near a volcano called Surt, located close to the north pole of this moon. Since then, despite numerous observations taken with various 8 to 10 m telescopes and images collected from spacecraft such as Galileo, New Horizons, and even the Hubble Space Telescope, no eruption of similar intensity has been observed on Io.

If you adopt Franck, you’ll help in preparing the observations, be present when they’re taken, and assist with the data processing and analysis of the spectra. A second visit to another Chilean observatory (La Silla or Las Campanas) will also be organized.

In addition to his work on Io, Franck Marchis leads an international group of astronomers hoping to search for and study multiple asteroid systems using mostly ground-based telescopes. The first companion of an asteroid was discovered in 1993 by the Galileo spacecraft. Since then, and thanks to improved instruments, more than 170 multiple asteroidal systems have been found. Their existence provides direct clues about the collisional past of the solar system and the formation of major planets.

The direct measurement of the bulk density of an asteroid, which can be obtained when the orbit of an attendant moon is present, give clues to the composition and distribution of material in the asteroid. In 2005, Franck’s team discovered the first triple asteroidal system. It consists of Sylvia, a 200 km irregular body, surrounded by two kilometer-sized satellites named Romulus and Remus.

To prepare for the future arrival of giant 30 - 40 m telescopes, Franck is helping to develop a new generation of adaptive optics systems, including working out the numerical algorithms needed to improve image quality.

Dr. Franck Marchis is a Principal Investigator at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute, and also Assistant Research Astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley.

Our solar system is characterized by considerable diversity of its constituent bodies. Franck Marchis’ first involvement in the study of this diversity started in 1996 while working at the UNAM Astronomy Department in Mexico City. He made the first ground-based observations of the volcanoes on the jovian moon Io, using the first Adaptive Optics (AO) systems available on the European Southern Observatory (ESO) 3.6 m telescope at Chile’s La Silla Observatory. After a brief stay in London and four years in Chile at ESO, he completed his PhD in France in 2000. This doctoral research described the application of adaptive optics to the study of the solar system.

He continued this explorative work at U. C. Berkeley where he had the opportunity to use the Keck 10 m telescope and its revolutionary Laser Guide Star AO system. In collaborations with astronomers of the Observatoire de Paris, he searched for, and studied moons around asteroids.

Franck is also involved in the definition of new generation of AOs for 8 - 10 m class telescopes and data processing of images, both astronomical and biological, using fluorescence microscopy. His research involves both undergraduate and graduate students, and Marchis is eager about contributing to the diversity of our science community and educating a new generation of researchers.

For more information on how to adopt this scientist
Please call us toll free at 1-866-616-3617 and ask for Karen Randall.