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Profile
| Academic position | Full Professor |
|---|---|
| Research fields | Astronomy |
| Keywords | Star-formation, Astrometry, Interferometry, Astrochemistry, Molecular clouds |
Current contact address
| Country | Mexico |
|---|---|
| City | Morelia |
| Institution | Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) |
| Institute | Instituto de Radioastronomia y Astrofisica |
| Homepage | http://www.crya.unam.mx/~l.loinard |
Host during sponsorship
| Prof. Dr. Karl M. Menten | Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn |
|---|---|
| Start of initial sponsorship | 01/08/2011 |
Programme(s)
| 2011 | Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award Programme |
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Nominator's project description
| Professor Laurent Loinard is an internationally renowned astronomer who has made prominent contributions in several areas of radio astronomy. In recent years his efforts have concentrated in ultra-high angular resolution observations achieved by linking radio telescopes together. With this technique he has determined accurate distances to nearby star forming regions by the method of the annual trigonometric parallax. This is of course the technique that was used for the very first time by Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel to measure the distance to a fixed star, in 1838, which secured him immortality in the pantheon of astronomy. The targets whose distances Prof. Loinard measures are more than 50 times further away! During his stay in Bonn, he has initiated a program with the APEX telescope operated by the institute in Chile. It resulted in the first detection of an astounding richness of molecules from one of the most remarkable stars in the Milky Way, eta Carinae. |