The ARRAKIHS space mission selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) and led by Spain, starts its scientific preparation period at the Javalambre Astrophysical Observatory (OAJ), in the province of Teruel. This milestone is a fundamental step towards the launch of the mission planned for 2030, which will study the formation process of galaxies such as the Milky Way, including the role of dark matter.

For the first time, the fibre optic links the OAJ and the headquarters of the Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA). It thus joins the RedIRIS optical network that links more than 500 scientific and academic institutions in Spain. The investment, financed by the European Union through Next Generation EU funds, amounts to 1.7 million euros and will indirectly benefit some municipalities in Teruel.

The most powerful telescope at the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (OAJ) opens its first call for scientific teams from all over the world to work with it. Its 56 filters provide so much information that more than 300 shots are required to observe 5 square degrees of the sky. Proposals can be submitted from today until 15 April to the Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA).

The meeting of the Astronomy Infrastructure Network has laid the groundwork for projects to be received from other centres and researchers in the coming months. The Javalambre Astrophysical Observatory's large-format telescope opens for the first time to international scientific collaborations

The milestone implies the technological completion of the Javalambre Astrophysical Observatory, in Teruel.

The Minister of Science of the Government of Aragon and President of the Board of CEFCA, María Eugenia Díaz, has visited the OAJ facilities.

After the first light, the Pathfinder images reach 0.4” PSF resolutions in its first days of operation.

The J-PAS Pathfinder camera of the Javalambre Survey Telescope (JST250) received its first light on the night of 20th February, obtaining succesfully an image of the open cluster NGC1960. After the commissioning of the instrument, the Unique Scientific and Technical Infrastructure (ICTS, in their Spanish initials) Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre is working at full capacity, operating routinely the two main telescopes with first-level scientific instrumentation.

After passing the verification tests, the cryogenic camera is being prepared to be delivered at CEFCA next August.

The OAJ already keeps the actuator system of JPCam in its clean room. After its arrival in mid January, the engineering team has carried out the integration of the system at the observatory in order to start with the verification and fine-tune processes, first in the clean room and, finally, in the JST250 telescope.

In late September, responsible members of CEFCA and the J-PAS collaboration visited e2v headquarters to see, first hand, the progress made on the set up of the cryogenic camera of JPCam, the scientific instrument designed by CEFCA and Brazil for the JST250 telescope.

The twelve filters of the J-PLUS survey have been integrated into T80Cam, the scientific camera which is installed in the JAST80 telescope of the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre.

With the successful achievement of this important milestone, e2v has demonstrated that the focal plane is well within the very strict JPCam requirements. The JPCam engineering focal plane has been successfully integrated at e2v (Chelmsford, UK). JPCam, the main scientific instrument of the JST250 telescope, is a 1.2 Gpixel camera designed to perform the J-PAS survey.

T80Cam, the scientific camera of the JAST80 telescope of the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (CEFCA's observatory), has taken its first image of the Javalambre night sky. This achievement is known as First Light, as this is the first time that light coming from an astronomical object is registered by the T80Cam detector.

The scientific instrument for the JAST80 telescope, T80Cam, has been successfully installed at the Cassegrain focus of the JAST80 telescope of the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (CEFCA).

J-PLUS filters have been received and accepted at CEFCA headquarters (Teruel). The filters have been manufactured by SCHOTT (Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland). These have been specifically developed for the J-PLUS survey and have required more than two years of research and development effort both from SCHOTT and CEFCA.

This week, the Institute of Astronomy , Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Sao Paulo and the Spanish company NTE-Sener signed the contract of the support structure and the actuator system of the JPCam.

In mid-November, the Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA) and US company Spectral Instruments signed a contract to provide the cryogenic camera system for the JAST80 telescope of the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (OAJ).

In early December, and after an international process of peer review, Brazil’s Observatório Nacional, a partner institution in the Javalambre Physics of the Accelerated Universe Astrophysical Survey collaboration (J-PAS), and British company E2V signed a contract to provide the cryogenic camera system for the JST250 telescope of the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre.

The call for tenders for the supply contract of the Wide Field Focal Plane Imager for the JAST80 telescope (T80lm) Javalambre Astrophysical Observatory (CEFCA) is open.