The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has been awarded a new ERC Advanced Grant by the European Research Council (ERC) for the MELODY project, led by researcher Savita Mathur. This grant, one of the most prestigious and competitive in European science, supports established researchers with outstanding track records and highly innovative proposals, with the aim of promoting frontier research capable of opening up new avenues of knowledge. MELODY’s main objective is to study the rotation and magnetic activity of Sun-like stars in order to understand in greater detail the physical

One of the biggest recent surprises in astronomy is the discovery that most stars like the Sun harbor a planet between the size of Earth and Neptune within the orbit of Mercury — sizes and orbits absent from our solar system. These ‘ super-Earths' and ` sub-Neptunes’ are the galaxy's most common planets, but their formation has been shrouded in mystery. Now, an international team of astronomers has found a crucial missing link. By weighing four newborn planets in the V1298 Tau system, they've captured a rare snapshot of worlds in the process of transforming into the galaxy's most common