THE ART OF ASTROPHYSICAL MEASUREMENTS. An elementary lecture on photon counting and S/N

Abstract: Have you ever dared to understand how many photons are detected by your camera when you are pointing the telescope to the sky? Is the action of the spectrograph fully understood when analyzing those photons? Do typical image formation rules hold when studying the polarization of light? All these are a few examples of questions addressed by researchers when designing instruments, which are later constrained by technological capabilities. This talk will summarize them with the aim of triggering basic curiosity of scientists to get an insight on the means at their disposal to investigate the Universe.

Scientific profile of the speaker: Since 1998 he belongs to the staff of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC). He is a co- Investigator of the stratospheric balloon Sunrise mission. He is an associate investigator of the AIA instrument of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory mission. He is the co-Principal Investigator of the SO/PHI magnetograph for the European space agency’s Solar Orbiter mission. He is Principal Investigator of the TuMag magnetograph and co-Principal Investigator of the SCIP spectropolarimeter for the Sunrise III mission.