Highlights of Spanish Astrophysics IV: Proceedings of the Seventh Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA), held in Barcelona, Spain, September 12-15, 2006

This volume documents the contributions presented at the Seventh Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (Sociedad Española de Astronomía, SEA). The event bought together 301 participants who presented 161 contributed talks and 120 posters, the greatest numbers up to now. The fact that most exciting items of the current astronomical research were addressed in the meeting proofs the good health of the SEA, a consolidated organization founded fifteen years ago in Barcelona. Two plenary sessions of the meeting were devoted to the approved entrance of Spain as a full member of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and to the imminent first light of the greatest telescope in the world, the GTC (Gran Telescopio de Canarias), milestones that will certainly lead the Spanish Astronomy in the next future. Front Matter....Pages i-xx Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Youth, Accretion, and Mass Loss at the End of the Main Sequence....Pages 3-14 The European Extremely Large Telescope....Pages 15-28 Gamma Ray Bursts: Lighthouses of the Universe....Pages 29-40 The VIMOS VLT Deep Survey (VVDS)....Pages 41-48 Front Matter....Pages 49-49 Galaxy Surveys in the Era of Large Ground-Based Observatories....Pages 51-61 The GTC 10 m Telescope: Getting Ready for First Light....Pages 63-69 OSIRIS: Status and Science....Pages 71-80 EMIR, the GTC NIR Multiobject Imager-Spectrograph....Pages 81-90 CanariCam: Instrument Status and Frontier Science....Pages 91-102 Front Matter....Pages 103-103 Radiative Transfer in Molecular Lines. Astrophysical Applications....Pages 105-116 The Star Formation History of Early-type Galaxies as a Function of Environment....Pages 117-127 Front Matter....Pages 129-129 Galaxy Evolution in Galaxy Clusters: Diffuse Light in the Virgo Cluster....Pages 131-142 The Quest for Obscured AGN at Cosmological Distances: Infrared Power-Law Galaxies....Pages 143-155 AMIGA: A New Model of Galaxy Formation and Evolution....Pages 157-164 The Innermost Regions of Active Galactic Nuclei – From Radio to X-rays....Pages 165-176 Gaussian Analysis of the CMB with the Smooth Tests of Goodness of Fit....Pages 177-184 Dark Matter in Galaxy Clusters....Pages 185-191 Cosmology with the Largest Scale Structures: Probing Dark Energy....Pages 193-200 Observational Cosmology at High Redshift....Pages 201-208 An Ha Approach to the Evolution of the Galaxy Population of the Universe....Pages 209-216 Front Matter....Pages 217-217 Multi-Wavelength Astronomy and the Unidentified γ-ray Sources....Pages 219-230 The Disc and Plane of the Milky Way in the Near Infrared....Pages 231-238 AGB Stars: Nucleosynthesis and Open Problems....Pages 239-246 Studying Galaxy Formation and Evolution from Local Group Galaxies....Pages 247-254 Gaia: A Major Step in the Knowledge of Our Galaxy....Pages 255-262 Cepheus A, a Laboratory for Testing and Opening New Theories on High-mass Star Formation....Pages 263-268 Front Matter....Pages 269-269 A Look into the Guts of Sunspots....Pages 271-278 Earth-like Exoplanets. Darwin: Stellar Targets and Precursor Science....Pages 279-285 How the Comet 9P/Tempel 1 has Behaved Before, During, and After the Deep Impact Event....Pages 287-294 Heliospheric Energetic Particle Variability Over the Solar Cycle....Pages 295-302 Two Years of Saturn's Exploration by the Cassini Spacecraft: Atmospheric Studies....Pages 303-310 A New Way for Exploring Solar and Stellar Magnetic Fields....Pages 311-318 Front Matter....Pages 319-319 The MAGIC Telescopes (and Beyond...)....Pages 321-329 Present and Future of Astronomy at the Observatorio del Teide....Pages 331-338 Prospects for the William Herschel Telescope....Pages 339-344 VO Science. The Spanish Virtual Observatory....Pages 345-352 Back Matter....Pages 353-367

This volume documents the contributions presented at the Seventh Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (Sociedad Española de Astronomía, SEA). The event bought together 301 participants who presented 161 contributed talks and 120 posters, the greatest number of contributions in the history of the meeting. The fact that most exciting items of the current astronomical research were addressed in the meeting is proof of the good health of the SEA, a consolidated organization founded fifteen years ago in Barcelona.

This volume documents the contributions presented at the Seventh Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (Sociedad Española de Astronomía, SEA). The event bought together 301 participants who presented 161 contributed talks and 120 posters, the greatest number of contributions in the history of the meeting. The fact that most exciting items of the current astronomical research were addressed in the meeting is proof of the good health of the SEA, a consolidated organization founded fifteen years ago in Barcelona. This volume documents the contributions presented at the Seventh Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (Sociedad Espanola de Astronomia, SEA). The event bought together 301 participants who presented 161 contributed talks and 120 posters, the greatest number of contributions in the history of the meeting.