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.

  • Diego Blas
    The gravitational force needed for the universe to evolve from when it was almost uniform, during the Big Bang, until galaxies, stars, and planets were formed is provided by the “dark matter”. But in spite of the essential role of this basic component, which is estimated to make up some 80% of the matter in the universe, scientists know virtually nothing about its nature, behaviour, and composition, which is one of the main challenges in current physics and cosmology. Aiming to give answers to these questions the researcher Diego Blas, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics of King’s
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  • ALMA cuásar
    Cristina Ramos Almeida, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has led research which used data from the ALMA telescope in Chile to understand how supermassive black holes impact the host galaxies they inhabit. The results are published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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  • Abell 370
    A team of researchers from the cosmology group at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias has obtained one of the most accurate measurements of the masses of clusters of galaxies, and of their relation with the amount of hot gas in these clusters. To do this they have studied the dynamics of the galaxies in 570 clusters selected from the catalogue produced by the Planck satellite (ESA). This study has been produced during four years of work, in which over 10,000 spectra have been obtained with the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) and the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) at the Roque de los
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  • Proxima Centauri Planets
    An international team of astronomers, co-led by researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has confirmed the presence of a new planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System. It is the third planet detected in this star and one of the lowest mass planets ever discovered, with only a quarter of the mass of the Earth. The study, published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, uses observations made with the ESPRESSO spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. Proxima Centauri is the
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  • The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), which has 94 female researchers and engineers, consolidates its commitment to gender equality by participating in more than ten actions to join this February 11. Among the aims of commemorating this day are the promotion of scientific and technological vocations among girls and young women and the visibility of the role of women in the development of science. In 2015 the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed 11th February as The Day of Women and Girls in Science. The aim of this date is to promote the access, the full participation
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  • SHARKS
    The first data release of the SHARKS public survey, led by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), was provided to the astrophysical community today. This project, which has reached its first milestone, uses the 4-metre VISTA telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile to map large portions of the sky in the near-infrared, a range of the spectrum invisible to the human eye. The near-infrared wavelength range, a type of light imperceptible to the human eye, allows us to explore regions of the Universe that are obscured by cosmic dust or are too cold to
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