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.

  • High-resolution optical spectra (in black) and best model fits (in red) in the Li I 6708 Å region for the AGB stars RU Ari, R Cen, SV Cas, and RU Cyg. The derived Li (in the usual scale log N(X) + 12) are indicated. Synthetic spectra obtained for Li abund
    Low− and intermediate-mass (0.8 < M < 8 solar mass) stars constitute most of the stars in the Universe and they end their lives with a phase of strong mass loss and thermal pulses (TP) on the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB). AGB stars are fundamental to understand the chemical evolution of galaxies because they are one of the main contributors to the chemical enrichment (e.g. C, N, Li, F, and s-process elements) of the interstellar medium where new stars and planets born. In particular, the more massive (>4-5 solar mass) AGB stars experience Hot Bottom Burning (HBB), i.e. proton-capture
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  • The neighborhood of NGC1277 as seen by the HST F625W filter. The left panel shows the two closest galaxies whose light contaminate  NGC1277.  The right panel shows NGC1277 after the subtraction of the contaminant light.  The results indicates that NGC1277
    As early as 10 Gyr ago, galaxies with more than 10 ^11 M_sun in stars already existed. While most of these  massive galaxies must have subsequently transformed through on-going star formation and mergers with other galaxies, a small fraction (<0.1%) may have survived untouched till today. Searches for such relic galaxies, useful windows to explore the early Universe, have been inconclusive to date: galaxies with masses and sizes like those observed at high redshift (M_*>10 ^11 M_sun; R_e<1.5 kpc) have been found in the local Universe, but their stars are far too young for the galaxy to be a
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  • Artist's impression of complex fullerenes (carbon onions or multishell fullerenes such as C60@C240 and C60@C240@C540) produced by a planetary nebula and expelled into the interstellar medium. The connection between these molecules and certain diffuse inte
    We have found evidence that the presence of ‘carbon onions’ and other large molecules derived from fullerene could be commonplace in space. These are the most complex molecules detected so far and their discovery has important implications regarding our understanding of circumstellar and interstellar physics and chemisty, as well as of molecular processes in the final stages of stellar evolution. The work also provides new insights into understanding the origin and composition of the so-called diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs), one of the most enigmatic phenomena in astrophysics. Discovered
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  • Rotation plays a key role in the life cycles of stars with masses above 8 Msun. Hence, accurate knowledge of the rotation rates of such massive stars is critical for understanding their properties and for constraining models of their evolution.This paper investigates the reliability of current methods used to derive projected rotation speeds v sin i from line-broadening signatures in the photospheric spectra of massive stars, focusing on stars that are not rapidly rotating.We use slowly rotating magnetic O-stars with well-determined rotation periods to test the Fourier transform (FT) and
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  • Selection window employed to look for our LBGs at z ~ 3 (light grey shaded zone). Black dots are the complete sample of galaxies in the Capak et al. (2004) photometric catalog. Red filled dots represent the sample of LBGs spectroscopically confirmed to be
    Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) represent one of the kinds of star-forming galaxies that are found in the high-redshift universe. The detection of LBGs in the FIR domain can provide very important clues on their dust attenuation and total star-formation rate (SFR), allowing a more detailed study than those performed so far. In this work we explore the FIR emission of a sample of 16 LBGs at z ~ 3 in the GOODS-North and GOODS-South fields that are individually detected in PACS-100um or PACS-160um. These detections demonstrate the possibility of measuring the dust emission of LBGs at high redshift
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  • Abundance ratios of oxygen, magnesium and silicon relative to iron for the five stars in the bulge discovered by APOGEE (black filled circles) and literature values for other populations in the bulge (open circles), halo (squares), thin disk (crosses) and
    Despite its importance for understanding the nature of early stellar generations and for constraining Galactic bulge formation models, at present little is known about the metal-poor stellar content of the central Milky Way. This is a consequence of the great distances involved and intervening dust obscuration, which challenge optical studies. However, the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), a wide-area, multifiber, high-resolution spectroscopic survey within Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), is exploring the chemistry of all Galactic stellar populations
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