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.

List view
  • Image of the IAC representatives who have attended the inauguration of the Walk of the Stars of Science of La Palma. Credit: Aarón García Botín (IAC)
    Press release
    The Walk of the Stars of Science is inaugurated in La Palma
    On Saturday, the Cabildo of La Palma, the City Council of Santa Cruz de la Palma, and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) inaugurated the Walk of the Stars of Science of La Palma, situated in the Avenida Marítima of the capital, and unique in the world, in which persons and the work of famous scientists is recognized.
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  • Distribution of dark matter and its tracers (halos). Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).
    Press release
    New techniques are developed for producing synthetic catalogues of galaxies
    The group of Cosmology and Large Scale Structure at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has developed, using the BAM (Bias Assignment Method) numerical computer code, a novel strategy to generate precise synthetic catalogues of galaxies to reproduce the observations of the census of galaxies, which will help to yield valuable cosmological information and to elucidate the nature of dark energy.
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  • Image of the ION SCV LAURENTIUS satellite platform, where the DRAGO instrument will be integrated. Credit: D-Orbit.
    Press release
    Agreement with D-Orbit to integrate DRAGO in the ION satellite
    The IACTEC-Space programme of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has signed an agreement with the Italian space tranporting company D-Orbit to integrate the payload of the DRAGO instrument into the ION Satellite Carrier. The aim of this project is to carry out in-orbit demonstration (IOD) operations during the next PULSE misión, which will take place in January 2021. The programme is carried out within IACTEC, the zone of technical and business collaboration of the IAC which is funded (Programme of Training) and infrastructure (IACTEC building) by the Cabildo Insular of Tenerife.
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  • Delegation from the Tourism Summit at the Gran Telescopio Canarias
    Photomontage
    The Roque de los Muchachos Observatory serves as an inspiration to the world tourism summit which is being held on La Palma
    A delegation made up of political authorities and representatives of some of the institutions taking part today in the world summit Setting the Recovery of International Tourism into Action taking place in La Palma yesterday visited the instalations of the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM) where they could see at first hand some of the telescopes and the science which is carried out there.
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  • This image presents the region around the galaxy NGC 1052-DF4, taken by the IAC80 telescope at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife. The figure highlights the main galaxies in the field-of-view, including NGC 1052-DF4 (center of the image), and its neighbor NGC 1035 (center left).
    Press release
    A mechanism for removing dark matter from galaxies has been found
    The small fraction of dark matter in the galaxy NGC1052-DF4 has worried the astronomical community for several years. Now a team of researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAAC) the University of La Laguna (ULL) the University of New South Wales, the Insituto de Astrofísica de Andalucia, and NASA’S Ames Research Center have found a mechnism which can esplain it. This finding, which is to be published in the scientific journal The Astrophysical Journal, manages to make this phenomenon fit with accepted models of formation and evolution of galaxies.
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  • Heavy-element abundance pattern for a P-rich star (blue stars), together with the abundances of stars representative of the s- (CH; red), i- (CEMP-i; magenta), and r- (EMP-r; green) neutron capture processes. The P-rich stars heavy-element pattern is more similar to the CH stars or the s-process.
    Research news
    A new stellar site for the formation of very heavy elements
    The recently discovered phosphorus-rich stars pose a challenge to stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis (that is, the formation of chemical elements in stellar interiors) theory, as none of the existing models can explain their extremely peculiar chemical abundances pattern. Apart from the large phosphorus (P) enhancement, such stars also show enhancement in other light (O, Mg, Si, Al) and heavy (e.g., Ce) elements. Thanks to the Spanish Service Time at the Nordic Optical Telescope, we have recently obtained high-resolution optical spectra of two optically bright phosphorus-rich stars
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