If you want to see the movie: "Tancredi:
the movie and the star", click here
I started my astronomical carreer as a Planetarium
lecturer, where I learn the few things I know about the myths of the heavens.
Meanwhile, I have to fight at the Faculty to find good enough teachers
to finish my undergraduate studies. 12 years of dictatorship threw away
too many good scientists from the University. Fortunately many came back
after the reestablishment of the democracy (e.g. Julio A. Fenrnandez).
In 1989 I managed to became the first Licenciate in Astronomy in the last
10 years.Afterwards I moved to the UppsalaAstronomical
Observatory (Sweden).
The cold outside but the warm scientific climate
inside the institute let me experience the most valuable and enjoyable
scientific experience of my life. Four years of hard work ended with the
PhD thesis "Evolution
of Jupiter Family Comets". Returned to my homeland and homeinstitute,
I continue my work on minor bodies of the solar system, trying to make
the poor explore liason between physical and dynamical studies, theoretical
and observational research of these populations of objects.
In the '90s, I got into the fascinating topic of impacts of small bodies into the Earth. I became one of the few scientist in the southern hemisphere working in this topic. I studied several objects which could impact the Earth at some time, I visited and investigated many impact craters and meteorites. Recently, the deflection techniques that could prevent an impact interested me, and we are pursuing some experimental and theoritical work in this subject.
A topic that deserve a special mention is the participation in the downgrading of Pluto as a planet. I promoted and I was on of the co-author of the Resolution of the 2006 Internationa Astronomica Union General Assembly (Prague), where the "Definition of Planet in the Solar System" was adopted, and as a consequence Pluto lost the category of a planet and became a "dwarf planet".
