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.

  • DRAGO Proyecto Educativo
    The project "DRAGO: Canary Islands Educational Centres from Space" ended its 1st edition on Monday 27th June with a visit to the Teide Observatory for the winners and finalists, where they were also presented with the corresponding prizes. In this way, students and teachers from 5 schools in the Canary Islands were brought together in this first edition. DRAGO is an innovative educational project created by the space division of IACTEC, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, together with the Regional Ministry of Education, Universities, Culture and Sports of the Canary Islands
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  • Telescopio espacial James Webb
    On Friday July 15th at 19.00 h, in the hall of the Museum of Science and the Cosmos (MCC) of Tenerife, there will be a presentation of the first set of full colour images obtained with the largest and most complex observatory ever flown in space, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The James Webb Space Telescope is a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). It was launched into space on 25th December 2021 and since then has moved to its position at a “Lagrane Pint” one and half million kilometres from the Earth. Now, after some
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  • Visit of the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Science
    On June 28th and 29th, the Undersecretary of Science and Innovation, Carlos Marco Estellés, and his Chief of Technical Cabinet, Tomás Fraile Santos, visited the two Observatories of the Canary Islands, in Tenerife and La Palma. First, they went to the Teide Observatory, where they visited the facilities of the Optical Ground Station (OGS), IAC80, QUIJOTE and some of the robotic telescopes. They also made a solar observation, accompanied by the Director of the IAC, Rafael Rebolo López, the Manager of the OTAI, Anselmo Sosa Méndez, and the Head of the Scientific Communication and Culture Unit
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  • The amplitude of metallicity variations (indicated by the height of the colored rectangles) in neutral clouds is much larger and inconsistent with that found in HII regions, B-type stars, classical Cepheids and young open clusters.
    In this work we discuss and confront recent results on metallicity variations in the local interstellar medium, obtained from observations of H II regions by our group and neutral clouds (from literature) of the Galactic thin disk, and compare them with recent high-quality metallicity determinations of other tracers of the chemical composition of the interstellar medium as B-type stars, classical Cepheids, and young clusters. We find that the metallicity variations obtained for these last kinds of objects are consistent with each other and with that obtained for H II regions but
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  • AEACI 2022
    The eighth edition of the international summer school for teachers "Astronomy Education Adventure in the Canary Islands" will take place from 24 to 29 July in Tenerife and will focus on the relationship between Astronomy and the Sustainable Development Goals. The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), together with other scientific and educational institutions, organises the eighth edition of the international school for teachers "Astronomy Education Adventure in the Canary Islands" (AEACI) which this year will be dedicated to "Astronomy for Sustainable Development" on the occasion of
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  • The Near InfraRed Planet Searcher (NIRPS) instrument and its adaptive optics system
    Researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) have participated in the development of NIRPS, an instrument recently installed on the 3.6m telescope at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), which is now hunting for exoplanets around the coolest stars in the Milky Way from the La Silla Observatory, in Chile. The Near InfraRed Planet Searcher (NIRPS) has successfully carried out its first observations. “This remarkable infrared instrument will help us to find the nearest habitable worlds to our Solar System” states René Doyon, the Director of the Institute for Exoplanetary
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