The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is once again participating in the Miniferias de la Ciencia y la Innovación en Canarias, reinforcing its commitment to popularising science and bringing astronomy closer to the Canarian public. Through its Scientific Communication and Culture Unit (UC3), the research centre is taking part in the activities organised in La Palma from 22 to 24 May. Become astro-detectives for a day Astrophysicists and popularisers Alfred Rosenberg and Alejandra Goded lead the activity ‘Astro-detectives: How do astrophysicists study the Universe?’, an interactive

An international team of researchers, including researchers from the IAC, have studied in detail a remarkable couple of dwarf galaxies “dancing with each other” inside an unpopulated area of the Universe. This uncommon pair of low-mass galaxies merging “in the middle of nowhere”, near the center of a cosmic void, offers a unique view of one-on-one interactions and of the evolution of galaxies located in very low density environments. Researchers from the Calar Alto Void Integral-field Treasury surveY (CAVITY) project, led by the University of Granada, have discovered a rare and ongoing

An international study led by Almudena Prieto, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has found places where new stars are forming, as faint star clusters, around the centre of an evolved galaxy. This is the first time that young populations of stars have been picked out and dated in this type of galaxies dominated by very old stars, which can be called “rejuvenated old galaxies”. The research has combined observations from various telescopes, both ground based and space based, and has used innovative techniques of data analysis. The results are published in the