CARMENES: Finding Better Worlds

Yes, another talk on Earth-like exoplanets around the closest stars, but this time discovered with an instrument built by a German-Spanish consortium, operated by a Spanish observatory and with an important CAB contribution: CARMENES. It was the first high-resolution spectrograph that covers simultaneously both the optical and the near infrared. Now, it is not only at the worldwide forefront of the detection of the exoplanets that look like the most to our Earth, but also of the characterisation of atmospheres of bigger planets, and of the follow-up of transiting planets discovered with the NASA space mission TESS. “Comparative planetology” is not science-fiction any more: CARMENES is delivering a bunch of rocky “exoearths” for which we estimate their internal composition an, as soon the James Webb Space Telescope is launched, study their atmospheres for the first time. CARMENES is paving the way to finding new (better?) worlds.