An international scientific team, including researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL), have discovered magnetic waves in sunspots with such a high energy flux that they could keep the Sun's atmosphere at millions of degrees. The finding adds a new missing piece to the puzzle of why the Sun's outer layers are hotter than its surface despite being further away from the source of heat. The results are published in the journal Nature Astronomy. The Sun is powered by nuclear fusion of hydrogen at the core, where the temperature reaches

An international research, with the participation of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered an Earth-size exoplanet that may be carpeted with volcanoes. Called LP 791-18 d, the planet could undergo volcanic outbursts as often as Jupiter’s moon Io, the most volcanically active body in our solar system. The study is published in the scientific journal Nature. LP 791-18 d orbits a small red dwarf star about 90 light-years away in the southern constellation Crater. The team estimates it’s only slightly larger and more massive than Earth. Astronomers already knew about two

On 28th April last, 11 people joined the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias through the "INVESTIGO Programme" for hiring young job seekers to carry out research and innovation initiatives, financed by the Canary Islands Employment Service through the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan-Next Generation EU Funds. A welcoming ceremony was held in the classroom at the IAC Headquarters where the new staff was received by Alfonso López, coordinator of Instrumentation at the IAC, and Anselmo Sosa, manager of the Office of Transfer and Institutional Actions (OTAI). The different heads of

A study carried out by a team of researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has shown that an unusual thin structure of stars, recently discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope, could be a galaxy seen edge-on. This finding goes against the original interpretation in which a fleeing supermassive black hole was leaving a trail of stars in its wake. The new interpretation is published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters. A mysterious trail of stars formed eight thousand million years ago and recently discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope has been a challenge

An international scientific team, including the researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) Cristina Ramos Almeida, Patricia Bessiere and Giovanna Speranza, has discovered that quasars, some of the brightest and most powerful objects in the Universe, are mainly ignited by mergers between galaxies. The finding sheds new light, after years of controversy, on what causes the emission of large amounts of energy in the most powerful active nuclei. The research has used observations from the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) and the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) at the Roque de