A study published in the Astrophysical Journal supports models which question the need for the existence of this form of matter in galaxies

It will be its closest approach to the Earth (its perigee), at a distance of around 107 million kilometres, which is very close, considering that it originated in the Oort Cloud, at a distance from us of about a light year (some 9.5 billion kilometres). Although on those nights it will attain maximum brightness, it has not been as bright as was expected, so that it is not easy to find it with the naked eye. So binoculars are necessary, and a sky map, and we need to be at a place with dark sky to see the central zone of the comet. In spite of that it can be found near the Great Bear, and this

El presidente del Gobierno de Canarias visita el IAC Hoy, viernes 8 de enero, el presidente del Gobierno de Canarias, Fernando Clavijo, ha visitado la sede del Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), en La Laguna, para reunirse personalmente con el Director del centro, Rafael Rebolo, y conocer de primera mano los proyectos en los que está involucrado el Instituto. En dicho encuentro, se le han planteado distintos asuntos que conciernen al estado actual del IAC, como el progreso de su plan estratégico y el de las grandes instalaciones telescópicas para los Observatorios de Canarias

The Earth’s albedo is a fundamental climate parameter for understanding the radiation budget of the atmosphere. It has been traditionally measured from space platforms, but also from the ground for sixteen years from Big Bear Solar Observatory by observing the Moon. The photometric ratio of the dark (earthshine) to the bright (moonshine) sides of the Moon is used to determine nightly anomalies in the terrestrial albedo, with the aim is of quantifying sustained monthly, annual and/or decadal changes. We find two modest decadal scale cycles in the albedo, but with no significant net change

We present deep imaging observations of activated asteroid P/2016 G1 (PANSTARRS) using the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias ( GTC)  from 2016 late April to early June.  Activated asteroids are objects in orbits typical of asteroids with unlike origin in the cometary reservoirs (the Oort Cloud or the trans-neptunian belt), that ejected dust by any mechanism: sublimation of volatiles (like comets do); collision with another asteroid or rotational disruption. The images of P/2016 G1 show a dust cometary-like coma and were analysed by comparing them with simulated images obtained using a computed

We present new medium-resolution spectroscopic observations of the black hole X-ray binary Nova Muscae 1991 taken with X-Shooter spectrograph installed at the 8.2-m VLT telescope. These observations allow us to measure the time of inferior conjunction of the secondary star with the black hole in this system that, together with previous measurements, yield an orbital period decay of (dP/dt)= −20.7±12.7 ms yr −1 (−24.5 ± 15.1 μs per orbital cycle). This is significantly faster than those previously measured in the other black hole X-ray binaries A0620-00 and XTE J1118+480. No standard black