News

This section includes scientific and technological news from the IAC and its Observatories, as well as press releases on scientific and technological results, astronomical events, educational projects, outreach activities and institutional events.

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  • materia-socura
    Research news
    Researchers from the IAC discover that dark matter experiences forces beyond gravity
    The existence of dark matter is probably one of the fundamental mysteries of modern science and unraveling its nature has become one of the primary goals of modern Physics. Despite representing 85% of all matter in the Universe, we do not know what it is. In its simplest description, it is made up of particles that interact with each other and with ordinary matter only through gravity. However, this description does not correspond to any physical model. Finding out what dark matter is requires finding evidence of some kind of interaction of dark matter that goes beyond gravity. In our work
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  • The IAC shows the potential of the Canary Island Observatories at the American Astronomical Society meeting
    Press release
    The IAC shows the potential of the Canary Island Observatories at the American Astronomical Society meeting
    The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is demonstrating the quality and international relevance of the Canary Islands Observatories at the 245th session of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting being held this week in Maryland (USA). This meeting, led by the American astrophysics community, brings together the world's most important research centres in this field to share lines of work and proposals for the present and the future. The IAC delegation in Maryland is headed by the director of the centre, Valentín Martínez Pillet, who is part of the panel of speakers with a
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  • In this artist’s rendering, a stream of matter trails a white dwarf (sphere at lower right) orbiting within the innermost accretion disk surrounding 1ES 1927’s supermassive black hole. Credit: NASA/Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University
    Astronomers catch unprecedented features at brink of active black hole
    The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates in the study of a galaxy that hosts a supermassive black hole with previously unseen characteristics. The source is 1ES 1927+654, a galaxy located about 270 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. It harbors a central black hole with a mass equivalent to about 1.4 million Suns. “In 2018, the black hole began changing its properties right before our eyes, with a major optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray outburst,” said Eileen Meyer, an associate professor at UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County). “Many teams have
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  • El ministro Óscar López en uno de los laboratorios del IAC durante su visita al centro / Inés Bonet
    El ministro Óscar López conoce de primera mano el avance del proyecto ‘Redundancia de la red óptica RedIRIS del IAC’
    El ministro para la Transformación Digital y de la Función Pública, Óscar López, ha visitado el Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) para, entre otras infraestructuras, conocer de primera mano el avance del proyecto ‘Redundancia de la red óptica RedIRIS del IAC’. Óscar López ha destacado que “este proyecto ofrece la posibilidad de incorporar importantes capacidades industriales para los diferentes ecosistemas españoles de semiconductores. Y es especialmente importante para Canarias, incrementando el tejido tecnológico de la zona y la generación de empleo en las islas en un sector
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  • Image of the planetary nebula WeSb1 / Credit: Klaus Bernhard
    Press release
    The IAC discovers a planetary nebula that destroyed its solar system
    An international team of researchers, including staff from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered a planetary nebula that destroyed its own planetary system, conserving the remaining fragments in the form of dust orbiting its central star. To date, more than 5000 exoplanets have been discovered orbiting stars of all kinds and almost every stage of stellar evolution. However, while exoplanets have been discovered around white dwarfs – the final stage in the evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars like the Sun, no exoplanets have been detected in the previous
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  • Imagen de los telescopios de la red CTAO en el Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos tomada en octubre de 2024 con auroras boreales de fondo / Antonio González (Cielos de La Palma)
    Press release
    The CTAO becomes a European Research Infrastructure Consortium
    On January 7, 2025, the European Commission established the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), furthering its mission to become the world’s largest and most powerful observatory for gamma-ray astronomy. The creation of the CTAO ERIC will enable the Observatory's construction to advance rapidly and provide a framework for distributing its data worldwide, significantly accelerating its progress toward scientific discovery. “The ERIC will streamline the construction and operation of the Observatory in a way that will undoubtedly
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