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Dr. Josep Manel Carrasco is a researcher involved in Gaia calibration of photometric and spectrophotometric data. This work is carried out leading the DU12 development unit (in charge of developing the internal photometric calibration models) within the photometric calibration unit (CU5) of the Gaia consortium.
He studied physics at the Universitat de Barcelona and obtained his PhD in 2006 on the design and characterization of all photometric filters proposed to fly with Gaia in the first mission design. Thanks to this work, the definition of current characteristics of the Gaia spectrophotometric instrument (BP/RP) could be done. Dr. Carrasco is involved in the internal calibration BP/RP data, modelling instrumental effects changing with time and position in the focal plane and defining a unique instrument to relate all observations. Besides, the work defining the Gaia photometric system was the basis for defining the photometric filters for the JPLUS project at the Javalambre Observatory.
The career of Dr. Josep Manel Carrasco has been carried out internationally, within the European Space Agency (ESA), with collaborations and stays in Copenhagen, Cambridge, Bologna, Leiden, etc, making an outstanding and recognized contribution (Berkeley Award 2023 and Ciutat de Barcelona Award 2013) to the design and calibration of the photometric and spectrophotometric instrument.
In addition to contributing to the calibration, Josep Manel also contributed in assessing the status of the satellite (as part of the Payload Experts group) and creating the catalog of Gaia in CU9 coordination unit in the different releases of Gaia data produced until now (DR1 in September 2016, DR2 in April 2018 and EDR3 in December 2020).
Gaia data has been widely used for new and exciting discoveries. Gaia shares with Hubble Space Telescope the highest number of refereed publications per year among ESA's missions (more than 14000 until now, see ADS library) and it has already overcome (without finishing its mission) the total number publications at the end of the mission of other ESA missions as INTEGRAL, Mars Express or Planck, which had longer period of operations.
This work at Gaia has allowed Dr. Carrasco to acquire extensive experience in stellar spectrophotometry, both theoretically (in instrumentation design, calibration methods, and data utilization) and practically (with satellite data and also through personal observations with professional telescopes, such as the 2.2m and 1.23m telescopes at Calar Alto, the Mercator, NOT, and Liverpool telescopes at Roque de los Muchachos, the 1.5m telescope at San Pedro Mártir in Mexico, and the 0.8m Joan Oró telescope in Lleida). Using information from Gaia observations, Josep Manel contributes to ground-based observations of the Gaia science alerts using the Joan Oró telescope from the Montsec Observatory, objects with sudden light changes detected by the satellite, to classify them as supernovae, microlenses, variable starts, etc.
He has also been studying the white dwarf contents in Gaia catalogues and in the JPLUS survey. He is also a member of the classification working group in the J-PLUS community and is studying the metallicity determination with JPLUS passbands for open clusters (in the JOCS project environment).
Josep Manel Carrasco is the project scientist of PhotSat Mission, the first astrophysical cubesat mission being prepared by the IEEC with the purpose of obtaining a full sky catalog of the 40 million brighter stars in the ultraviolet and visible and its temporal evolution. PhotSat is a 2-3 years mission cubesat observing the full sky every 2-3 days in three different passbands (two in the visible and one in the ultraviolet). This fast cadence will allow observing many objects rapidly changing their light in real time (scientific alerts). These alerts will be analysed on-board and on-ground in order to allow ground-based observations follow-up campaigns from different observatories around the world. During these processing, cosmic rays, asteroids and even artificial satellites will also be observed and analysed. At the end of the mission, each source in the sky will be observed several hundreds of times, providing an accurate photometric catalogue of all bright sources in the sky (up to magnitude 15).
Dr. Carrasco is also involved in other space missions, like Euclid, PLATO (leading the working group WP-131-150 in charge of simulating Gaia stars as seen with PLATO), Small-JASMINE and GaiaNIR. Dr. Carrasco is contributing to the Euclid mission (2023-2030), in the characterization of the photometric filters of the NISP instrument, in the determination of the PSF of the VIS instrument and the classification of the different observed sources using their NIR spectra.
GaiaNIR is the proposed mission to extend Gaia mission to the infrared beyond 2040s. With GaiaNIR, more sources will be accessible, reaching fainter magnitudes and exploring embedded regions in the galaxy (such as the galactic center and the interstellar matter between the stars in the galactic disc). Dr. Carrasco is developing the photometric instrument in charge of characterizing the different sources observed in the mission.
In the light pollution studies field, Dr. Carrasco contributed to the creation of GAMBONS, a model based on Gaia data able to estimate the amount of natural light expected, at any moment and any location, when observing the night sky. This estimation is extremely useful when combined with some measurements in order to assess the actual amount of light pollution present during the measurements (with devices such as “FreeDSM”), able to provide the inputs to GAMBONS in a standardized way allowing easy citizenship science to incorporate inputs to the model. The use of AI in order to analyse images from space will allow a proper determination of the light pollution contribution when combined with the masurements.
Dr. Carrasco has developed a solid career spanning more than twenty-five years as a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Quantum Physics and Astrophysics (FQA) at the University of Barcelona. He has taught a wide variety of subjects for which the department is responsible, in degrees such as Physics, Biomedical Engineering, Electronic Telecommunications Engineering, the double degree in Physics and Mathematics, as well as the Master's degree in Astrophysics, Particle Physics, and Cosmology. These courses include both core areas ("Linear Algebra and Geometry," "Differential Equations and Vector Calculus," and "Laboratory Fundamentals") and specialized subjects related to Astronomy ("Astronomy" for the first cycle, "Observational Astronomy" for the second cycle, "Astronomy from Space" for the Master's in Astrophysics, and the courses "Universitat de l'Experiència" and "Gaudir UB"). He has also supervised several master and degree thesis final works using Gaia, JPLUS and PhotSat data. The topics of these thesis are directly linked to Dr. Carrasco’s research and the use of professional techniques and telescopes. This approach has allowed students direct contact with high-level research, helping them develop practical and methodological skills and strengthening their resumes as researchers.
He is deeply involved in outreach, being one of the usual contacts of the UB astronomy department with many press, radio and television media when some news on astronomy is on the news. He has been directing astronomy radio and television segments, explaining many astronomy related concepts and space missions. He has also offered many outreach talks and prepared different material to explain Gaia and astronomy to the general public, schools, institutes, astronomical groups, ... He maintains a project called Miralcel, aiming to make outreach of astronomy and sharing visual resources to better understand astronomy related news and explain space exploration.
He is the author of the book "Cosmos: Una inmersión rápida", published in Tibidabo Editions.
Access to CV: here
ADS library: here
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