mountain landscape and his
concerns about the future of
the observatory. Everything
changed for him a decade later,
after Gemini South officially
opened its eyes. “Coming back
in 2005, as a member of a review panel,” he said, “I entered
the dome and had a very intense emotional experience.”
The Galileo Galilei
Planetarium in
Buenos Aires, Juan
Carlos‘ current
professional home.
colleagues. He is currently a member of Argentina’s “National Council for Research” (CONICET), which has supported his research and
educational activity throughout his career. As a
member of the Facultad de Ciencias Astronomicas y Geofisicas, he teaches Stellar Astronomy
at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, the first
graduate school in South America — an institution where he also got his Ph.D. in 1978.
Today, he describes Gemini Observatory as a place where astronomers can get the information they need to explain the
universe. For his own country’s
scientists, it’s a positive place to
be. “Certainly, the Gemini Observatory is also a very friendly
environment to promote international collaborations,” he
said. “Our Minister of Science and Technology,
Dr. Lino Barañao, has been very supportive of
our participation, and I hope this will continue in the future.”
Juan Carlos is also a member of the first National Academy of Sciences of Cordoba in Argentina, and has served the Gemini Observatory as a member of the Board of Directors.
He recalled his early contact with the observatory: “My previous knowledge about the
Gemini telescopes was quite appalling, and
was in a short article I saw titled ‘Muddled
Twins,‘ published by a well-known amateur
magazine. Fortunately, the dark and gloomy
landscape painted in that story was not real
and the Gemini Telescopes became the wonderful tools they are today.”
In 1994, Juan Carlos visited the Gemini South
site at Cerro Pachón before the facility was
built. He remembered well the bare, flattened
45
These days, Juan Carlos focuses most of his
astronomy research on extragalactic globular cluster systems. It began when he was a
post-doctoral researcher at Kitt Peak National
Observatory in Arizona. “My interest at that
time (in 1980) was focused on star-forming
regions and all the spectacular events that are
associated with these places,” he said. But, his
advisor, Steve Strom, had other ideas. “Steve
suggested we should work on the more quiet,
relaxed, old (and, to my mind, boring) globular clusters. My first impression of these objects changed dramatically in a few weeks as
I became involved in one of the first massive
applications of digital techniques in astronomy: the study of the very rich globular cluster systems associated with the giant galaxy
M87.”
Juan Carlos entered the field of globular studies at a particularly fortuitous time. Interest
in these massive objects was growing, par-
GeminiFocus
June2012