The Universe is not distributed uniformly. Galaxies are arranged in a gigantic cosmic web made of voids, filaments, and galaxy clusters. These filaments act as enormous “cosmic highways” through which matter and galaxies flow toward the densest regions of the Universe. Understanding how these structures influence galaxy evolution is one of the major goals of modern astrophysics. In this work, we analyzed hundreds of thousands of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to study how galaxy density changes around cosmic filaments in the nearby Universe. Our main goal was to determine

The TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has discovered many exoplanet candidates that need to be confirmed and characterized from the ground. One of them orbits Ross 176, a K-type dwarf star, where we have identified a promising hot “water-world” candidate. Using spectroscopic observations with the CARMENES instrument, we confirmed the planetary nature of the signal detected by TESS and estimated the planet’s mass. To improve the analysis, we applied an advanced statistical method called Gaussian Process, which allowed us to separate the star’s own variability (quite strong

Sub-Neptunes - planets larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune - are the most common type of planet in our Galaxy, yet they are entirely absent from our own Solar System. This absence makes them a major focus for astronomers seeking to understand planetary formation and evolution. We recently conducted an international study, as part of the THIRSTEE project, to characterize two such planets orbiting very similar small, cool stars known as M dwarfs: TOI-521 and TOI-912 . THIRSTEE is an observational-based program that aims to shed light on the sub-Neptune population by providing an