During October, the Adaptive Optics System team at the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTCAO) of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), in collaboration with the technical team at the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC or Grantecan), successfully completed the integration of the GRANCAIN instrument into the world's largest optical-infrared telescope. The installation was carried out at the GTCAO outlet on the telescope's Nasmyth B platform, a key step in initiating performance testing of the new adaptive optics system. This is the first scientific instrument to operate using the GTC's adaptive

An international team of scientists, including researchers from the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (IAC), has confirmed the existence of three bodies orbiting the dynamic exoplanetary system TOI-201. They include a super-earth (TOI-201 d), a warm Jupiter (TOI-201 b) and a brown dwarf (TOI-201 c). The paper is published in Science Advances. “The goal was to characterize the TOI-201 planetary system to understand not just what planets are there, but how they interact with each other dynamically,” said Ismael Mireles, a PhD candidate in the UNM Department of Physics and Astronomy and

Last night, the 5,000 fibre-optic ‘eyes’ of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) reached a major milestone, having fully covered the area originally planned for its map of the universe. Thus, DESI’s five-year programme has concluded ahead of schedule and with far more data than expected, resulting in the largest high-resolution 3D map of the universe ever produced. This map will enable researchers to explore dark energy, which accounts for 70% of the universe and drives its accelerated expansion. By comparing how galaxies were distributed in the past with their current