In the document presenting the General National Budget for 2021 approved by the Council of Ministers for 2021, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) will receive, next year, a sum of 9 million euros from the State Plan of Investments and Reforms. This extraordinary grant, which will be spent on investments and technological infrastructure, is in addition to the annual grant from the Ministry of Science and Innovation. The IAC is thereby recognized as a powerful motor attracting external funding to the Canaries to drive technological development and create employment.

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has finished, during October, with the help of FEDER funds, the renewal of the corporate network of the Canary Observatories, which means that the connected User Institutions will be able, with the new equipment, to augment their current connection capacity from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps.

The first tests of a concept using microwave radiometry have yielded promising results for the measurement of subcutaneous temperatures in biological tissues. The prototype has been developed in the programme of Medical Technology within IACTEC, the area of technological and business collaboration of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) with economic support (Training Programme) and infrastructure (the IACTEC building) from the Cabildo of Tenerife.

The flight model for the SWIR DRAGO camera, developed by the IACTEC-Space team at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has successfully passed all the tests needed to be integrable into the ION satellite for launch into space next December, on SPACE-X’s FALCON 9 rocket. This project is a part of IACTEC, the area of technical and industrial collaboration of the IAC, which is supported financially (Capacitation programme) and in infrastructure (IACTEC building) by the Cabildo Insular (island government) of Tenerife.

Next Tuesday, September 22nd, at 13:30 UT the Earth will be at a specific point in its orbit round the Sun: the September equinox. The September and March equinoxes are the only days in the year when the Sun rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in the west, across the whole planet.

After several months of waiting, this summer the EELabs project, led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, has started to deploy its first network of photometers.