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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  • Image of the Mercury transit obtain by Swedish Solar Telescope in 2016
    General
    Direct broadcast of the transit of Mercury
    Next Monday, November 11th, it will be possible to follow the transit of the planet Mercury across the face of the Sun from the Canary Island Observatories, from 12:36 p.m. to 18:04, on the channel YouTube IAC vídeos, of the Institute de Astrofísica de Canarias. A transit is defined as the passage of one astronomical object in front of another, so that the nearer occults a part of the surface of the farther. Only the inner planets (Marcury and Venus) can transit the Sun, from our viewpoint on Earth. In any century there are 13 transits of Mercury and the following transit will not occur
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  • Ceremonia de cambio de propiedad del NOT
    Press release
    The Universities of Turku (Finland) and Aarhus (Denmark) are the new owners of the NOT
    The Universities of Turku (UTU) and Aarhus (AU) are the new owners of the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) situated in the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM). The two institutions take over from the Nordic Optical Telescope Scientific Associations (NOTSA), a non-profit organization created in 1984 by the Reseearch Councils of Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway, with the later incorporation of Iceland, in 1997. On 1 October, a delegation from both universities took part in a simple event at the ORM, which was also attended by representatives of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
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  • Image, left-hand panel, and reflectance spectrum, right-hand panel, of interstellar comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) obtained by the 10.4~m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), located at the El Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain), which is managed by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) together with the Teide Observatory in the island of Tenerife.
    Press release
    The Gran Telescopio Canarias obtains the visible spectrum of C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), the first confirmed interstellar comet
    The spectrum acquired by GTC of interstellar comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) reveals that this object has a surface composition not unlike that found in Solar System comets. Shortly before dawn on September 13th, Julia de León, Miquel Serra-Ricart, Javier Licandro, all members of IAC's Solar System Group, and Carlos Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, from the Complutense University of Madrid, obtained high resolution images and visible spectra of comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) using the OSIRIS instrument at the 10.4m GTC, installed in the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma). Observations were
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  • Kilonova Evento 2016 GTC
    Press release
    A “gold mine” is detected in a collision of two distant stars
    An international team of astronomers, including researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the CSIC has found evidence of a “kilonomva” in the data from a gamma ray burst detected in August 2016. This is a phenomenon similar to the supernovae which produce large quantities of heavy elements, such as gold and platinum. This event is similar to another explosion detected by LIGO in 2017, for which the combined observation of light and gravitational waves opened the door to an understanding of this type of objects. The results are to be published in the journal Monthly
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