A team of cosmologists from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) and the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) has obtained the most accurate census to date of the dark matter halos of the Universe. The work is based on the development of a new model, called GPS+, capable of predicting how many dark matter halos exist at each stage of cosmic history. In the universe, there are enormous invisible structures surrounding galaxies and galaxy clusters. These are dark matter halos, concentrations of matter that do not emit light and cannot be directly observed, but

The European Patent Office (EPO) has granted the IAC a patent on an invention developed within IACTEC-Space . This technology improves the quality of images obtained by high-performance cameras under the demanding conditions found in space. The effectiveness of this technology has already been tested on three space missions, applying it to the DRAGO (Demonstrator for Remote Analysis of Ground Observations) cameras, developed at the IAC for Earth observation from space. Carlos Colodro, electronics engineer at IACTEC-Space and the main person responsible for this development, comments that

Astronomers have used telescopes around the world, includingthe Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC or Grantecan) at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, to study the asteroid 1998 KY26, revealing it to be almost three times smaller and spinning much faster than previously thought. The asteroid is the 2031 target for Japan’s Hayabusa2 extended mission. The new observations offer key information for the mission’s operations at the asteroid. “We found that the reality of the object is completely different from what it was previously described as,” says astronomer Toni Santana-Ros, a