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.

  • Rafael Rebolo, director of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), and Oskar von der Lühe, director Institute of Solar Physics (KIS), after the signing of the agreement.
    Rafael Rebolo, Director of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and Oskar von der Lühe, Director of the Kiepenheuer Institute for Solar Physics (KIS) in Freiburg (Germany) signed, at Aarhus (Denmark) on May 27th an agreement regulating the operations of the German solar telescopes at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife. This agreement, which was signed during the 75 th meeting of the International Scientific Committee (CCI) of the Canary Island Observatories, establishes the operations of the Vacuum Tower Telescope (VTT) and the GREGOR, the largest solar telescope in Europe, as
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  • On Thursday June 2 nd the EMIR spectrograph was successfully linked to the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC). After several days of trials following its arrival at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, on Wednesday it was moved to the base of the telescope and on Thursday morning it was maneuvered by crane up to the level of the side platforms of the GTC, and attached to the rotator where it will be in place to receive the light from the telescope. The teamwork between the groups from EMIR and the GTC was critical for the correct performance of these manoeuvres, which were very complicated
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  • Hoy, 2 de junio, Pedro Sánchez, secretario general del PSOE y candidato a la Presidencia del Gobierno, visitó el Observatorio del Teide. Acompañado por el director del Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Rafael Rebolo, el subdirector del mismo, Carlos Martínez, y el astrónomo y administrador del Observatorio, Miquel Serra-Ricart, pudo recorrer algunas de las instalaciones ubicadas en él, como la Estación Óptica Terrestre (OGS), las torres solares VTT, y el Experimento QUIJOTE. En este último, se mostró especialmente impresionado por el objetivo que pretenden conseguir estos dos
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  • Image of the “Canarias Einstein ring”. In the centre of the picture, we can see how the source galaxy (the greenish-blue circle), which is further away “surrounds” the lens galaxy (red dot) almost completely. This phenomenon is produced because the strong
    This unusual phenomenon, predicted by the theory of General Relativity, was discovered by chance by a doctoral student at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias while analysing images of the Sculptor dwarf galaxy.
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