The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located in Chile, today released its first images of the universe, known in astronomy as an instrument's “first light”. This event marks the beginning of a project that will revolutionise our understanding of the universe over the next decade. Jointly funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Energy (DOE), the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is participating, as part of a consortium of Spanish institutions, in its scientific exploitation and contributing observation time from the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC or

An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the IAC, have performed a unique cosmic test - measuring the mass of an ancient star using two entirely different methods, finding agreement to within just 1.4%. This result marks a milestone in our ability to determine the ages of old stars and use them as living fossils to study the Milky Way’s distant past. The team analysed the red giant in the binary system KIC 10001167 using two independent approaches: firstly, by measuring the brightness and radial velocity variations due to the orbital motion of the binary, and secondly

The distribution of planets in the over five thousand distant solar systems discovered to date forms a complex puzzle. There is a region in the planetary orbit graph, known as the " Neptunian desert", where very few Neptune-like planets with orbits of between two and four days period around their star have been recorded to date. Now, a scientific team led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IAA-CSIC) , using a novel technique, new planets around red dwarf stars located precisely in