Clues to the first stars may be hiding much closer to home than expected. An international team led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has detected potential chemical traces of the very first stars in the Universe within a neighboring galaxy. The setting for this discovery is NGC 1277, a well-known "relic" galaxy. While normal galaxies grow and transform by merging with others throughout their history, this compact system formed most of its stars very quickly in the early Universe and became frozen in time. Acting as a cosmic time capsule, this galaxy is perfect for

On 10 and 11 June, the IACTEC facilities – the technology transfer and business collaboration hub of the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (IAC) – will host the meeting of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Science Programme Committee (SPC), the body responsible for deciding how funds allocated to ESA’s science programme should be managed and for what purposes. The meeting in Tenerife brings together representatives from the 23 ESA member states and specialists involved in the planning, selection and monitoring of the scientific projects that will shape European space science in the

Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, among the tiniest and faintest galaxies known, may hold the key to understanding one of the Universe’s biggest mysteries: the true nature of dark matter. A new study reveals that even a single collision between dark matter particles every 10 billion years — roughly the age of the Universe — is enough to explain the dark matter cores observed in these small systems. These galaxies, which contain only a few thousand stars, are dominated by dark matter and have relatively simple evolutionary histories. That makes them ideal cosmic laboratories for testing theories