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.

  • The anti-correlation between the amount of metals and the star formation rate when comparing galaxies with similar stellar mass. Galaxies with more (lower image) and less (upper image) star-forming regions (the blue clumps) are shown.
    The so-called "fundamental metallicity relation" (FMR) has been known for almost 10 years, and it states that galaxies of the same stellar mass but larger star formation rate have more chemically primitive gas. It is thought to be fundamental because it naturally arises from the stochastic feeding of star-formation from external metal-poor gas accretion, a process extremely elusive to observe but essential according the cosmological simulations of galaxy formation. Galaxies transform gas into stars at a rate that quickly exhaust their gas reservoir. Therefore, a continuous supply of external
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  • Daniel Nóbrega-Siverio, Isabel Santos and Concepción Cárdenas, SEA Awards 2019 for the best Spanish Doctoral Thesis.
    The prizewinning thesis, with the title “Eruptive Phenomena in the solar atmosphere: radiative-magnetohydrodynamic models and the development of a numerical code” which was defended in July 2018 at the University of La Laguna, was directed by Fernando Moreno Insertis, Professor at the University of La Laguna and senior researcher at the IAC, and co-directed by Juan Martínez Sykora, of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL) California. Nóbrega Siverio is a postdoctoral researcher at the Rossland Centre for Solar Physics at the University of Oslo, (Norway). In his thesis
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  • The ultra-diffuse galaxy KKS2000]04 (NGC1052-DF2), towards the constellation of Cetus, considered previously a galaxy with no dark matter.
    The claimed detection of a diffuse galaxy lacking dark matter represents a possible challenge to our understanding of the properties of these galaxies and galaxy formation in general. The galaxy, already identified in photographic plates taken in the summer of 1976 at the UK 48-in Schmidt telescope, presents normal distance-independent properties (e.g. colour, velocity dispersion of its globular clusters). However, distance-dependent quantities are at odds with those of other similar galaxies, namely the luminosity function and sizes of its globular clusters, mass-to-light ratio, and dark
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  • The central five minutes of the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 (Idaho, USA). At the ends (left and right) images with DN 5 solar filter, the rest without filter. Combination of the second contact (left sequence), third contact (right sequence) and crown (center). Credit: J.C. Married / StarryEarth.
    On July 2nd there will be a total eclipse of the sun which will touch land only in Chile, Argentina, and on the island of Oeno a small corral atol in the centre of the Pacific. This astronomical event will be broadcast live via the web sky-live.tv, with the collaboration of the Cerro Tololo Observatory (Chile), and STARS4ALL, a project in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is participating.
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  • ARTEMIS telescope (SPECULOOS array) at the Teide Observatory.
    This new telescope for finding Earth-like planets which may transit some of the smaller cooler stars in the solar neighbourhood joints the SPECULOOS network of 1m diameter telescopes which include the University of Liège (Belgium), Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT), of the US, and now the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC).
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