Fernando Moreno Danvila

After taking a degree in Physics in the University of Granada, I started my research activity at the Instituto de Astrofí­sica de Andalucí­a (IAA-CSIC) in Granada, Spain.

I was first involved in the study of the physics of the airglow processes in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, and later on, in the study of the outer planet’s aerosols and clouds by radiative transfer models using spectroscopy and imaging, the subject of my PhD dissertation. Then I decided to spend a postdoctoral stay at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory under the supervision of Prof. Robert A. West, working on representation of methane absorption coefficients for radiative transfer and dynamical modeling in the outer planet’s atmospheres. Later on, the Solar System Department got involved in the ESA Rosetta Mission, in two instruments, the OSIRIS camera, and the grain detector device, GIADA.

With the purpose of gain insight into the physical properties of the cometary dust, and to perform an appropriate interpretation of the measurements to come, I developed a Monte Carlo dust tail dynamical code and, at the same time, I was involved in the early phases of the construction of a light scattering setup, which nowadays constitutes the well-known IAA-CoDuLab (Cosmic Dust Laboratory). The dust dynamical code has been used in the characterization of a sizable amount of comets and active asteroids. In particular, it has been used for the ground-based characterization of comet 67P, in the interpretation of the debris generated after the NASA/DART impact on Dimorphos, the secondary component of the binary asteroid Didymos, and in the slow speed boulders ejected after the impact that might be encountered by the ESA/Hera mission to the binary system in late 2026.