Asteroid 2009 DS₃₆ was discovered from Calar Alto Observatory (Spain) in the morning of February 25th 2009. Its fast motion on the sky suggested that it had to be located not too far away from Earth and indeed the preliminary orbit shows that this is a Near-Earth Object (NEO), the first object of this class discovered from Calar Alto. Its estimated diameter is around 15 meters...

A German research team has measured the distances to some of the coolest and oldest objects of our Galaxy. Thanks to Calar Alto telescopes and instruments, this team has been able to more than double the number of metal poor subdwarf stars whose distances have been measured by direct methods. Also, they have shown that one of the objects they observed is a brown dwarf, the oldest brown dwarf known...

The darkness and quality of the sky at Calar Alto Observatory is outstanding not only for astronomical observations in visible light, but also in the infrared. A recent study based on an extensive data set demonstrates that Calar Alto summit occupies one of the world leading places among the darkest astronomical observatories in the infrared. This analysis complements a previous scientific study centred on observations in visible light. It is confirmed that the fraction of useful time for astronomical observations at Calar Alto is around 70%...