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.

  • Premio CICOP
    Last Saturday the International Centre for Heritage Conservation (CICOP, the initials of its name in Spanish) awarded the International Prize for the Conservation and Protection of the astronomical quality of the Canary sky to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) for its contribution to the preservation of the darkness and transparency of the sky over the Islands via the Canary Observatories and the Technical Office for the Protection of the Sky (OTPC), which offer protection against light and radio wave pollution atmospheric contamination: a contribution which is exceptional
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  • Reunión Cabildo, IAC y Starmus
    Three organizations have today agreed to work jointly to ensure that the island will be the next host to the Starmus Festival, an international multidisciplinary event which unites science, art, and music. The president of the Cabild of La Palma, Mariano Zapata, the councillor for Culture and Historic Heritage, Jovita Monterrey, the Director of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) Rafael Rebolo, and the director and founder of the Starmus Festival, Garik Israelian met today in Santa Cruz de La Palma and agreed to continue collaborating so that the next edition of the Starmus
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  • Poster of the Astronomy Education Adventure in the Canary Islands 2021 course
    "Our home in the cosmic ocean" is the title chosen for the new edition of the International Summer Course for teachers organized by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) together with other educational institutions, which will take place from July 26 to 30 in virtual format. After the success of the last edition, held entirely online and in which some 200 teachers from more than 40 countries participated, the International Summer Course Astronomy Education Adventure in the Canary Islands repeats the format, with the aim of contributing to curb the pandemic of COVID-19 and reach more
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  • Artistic composition of a supermassive black hole regulating the evolution of its environment. Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC) and Dylan Nelson (Illustris-TNG).
    At the heart of almost every sufficiently massive galaxy there is a black hole whose gravitational field, although very intense, affects only a small region around the centre of the galaxy. Even though these objects are thousands of millions of times smaller than their host galaxies our current view is that the Universe can be understood only if the evolution of galaxies is regulated by the activity of these black holes, because without them the observed properties of the galaxies cannot be explained.
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  • Image of the placement of the four legs of the test cryostat in the AIV room of the IAC. Credit: Inés Bonet (IAC).
    The pre-optics for HARMONI, the optical and infrared spectrograph to be installed on the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) at Cerro Armazones (Chile), has passed successfully the test of the optomechanical design produced by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). The instrument will now proceed to the Final Design Phase, prior to the start of the building of the instrument for this telescope of 39 metres in diameter, the largest project in optical and infrared astronomy of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
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  • An example of a nearby spiral galaxy, M81, where the bulge is easily identified as the central redder part, and the disc, dotted with zones where stars are currently forming and appear as blue regions forming spiral arms. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA.
    An international team of scientists led from the Centre for Astrobiology (CAB, CSIC-INTA), with participation from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has used the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) to study a representative sample of galaxies, both disc and spheroidal, in a deep sky zone in the constellation of the Great Bear to characterize the properties of the stellar populations of galactic bulges. The researchers have been able to determine the mode of formation and development of these galactic structures. The results of this study were recently published in The Astrophysical
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