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.

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).

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

Desde el Ministerio de Función Pública, se está organizando un curso básico de igualdad al que el personal del IAC puede apuntarse. Queremos aclarar que esta oferta formativa es distinta de la que el Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación nos hizo llegar en marzo, ofertando diversos cursos y con 5 plazas por curso reservadas al personal del IAC. Para apuntarse a este curso organizado por Función Pública, l a presentación de solicitudes de inscripción se realizará con carácter GENERAL a través del Portal FUNCIONA, siguiendo el enlace https://www.funciona.es/public/funciona/AreaPersonal

Since it started in 2017 this technological and business unit of the IAC has hosted over 20 university students for short term stays. Thanks to this training programme the students develop their technological capabilities and improve their aptitutde for working locally in the field of technology. One of the aims of IACTEC, in its role as the IAC’s unit of collaboration between the public and private sectors, is to build up the fabric of local high technogy companies in areas close to the IAC’s specialities. To support this productive structure IACTEC offers training opportunities, mainly to

An international team of astrophysicists led by the Stellar Astrophysics Group of the University of Alicante (UA), the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), and the University of Valparaíso (Chile) has discovered a massive cluster of stars of intermediate age in the direction of the Scutum constellation. This object, which has been named Valparaíso 1, lies some seven thousand light years away from the Sun, and contains at least fifteen thousand stars. To detect it, observations have been combined from ESA’s Gaia satellite, and various ground-based telescopes, including the Isaac Newton