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.

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  • Ilustración del 8 de marzo: Día Internacional de la Mujer. Crédito: Inés Bonet (IAC).
    Press release
    El IAC reivindica la labor de sus trabajadoras en el Día Internacional de la Mujer
    “Las mujeres sostienen la mitad del cielo”, dice un proverbio chino y máxima muy presente en el Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), que un año más se suma a la celebración del 8 de Marzo, Día Internacional de la Mujer. Y lo hace con una serie de actividades que, entre otros fines, buscan reivindicar el papel de las mujeres de distintos perfiles y ámbitos -investigación, enseñanza, instrumentación, divulgación, servicios informáticos, instalaciones telescópicas y administración- que trabajan en este centro.
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  • Artistic impression of the surface of Gliese 486 b. Credit: RenderArea.
    Research news
    A nearby transiting rocky exoplanet that is suitable for atmospheric investigation
    We detect a transiting rocky planet with an orbital period of 1.467 days around the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 486. The planet Gliese 486 b is 2.81 Earth masses and 1.31 Earth radii, a composition similar to that of Venus or Earth, as determined from exquisite radial velocity data and photometric light curves. The host star is at a distance of 26 light-years, very bright, and observable from both hemispheres of Earth. The stellar and planet properties indicate that despite the hot surface temperatures it is possible that the planet conserved part of its original atmosphere, making it an
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  • Artist's impression of the atmosphere of Gliese 486b. Credit: RenderArea
    Press release
    A super-Earth is discovered which can be used to test planetary atmosphere models
    During the past 25 years astronomers have discovered a wide variety of exoplanets, made of rock, ice and gas, thanks to the construction of astronomical instruments designed specifically for planet searches. Also, using a combination of different observing techniques they have been able to determine a large numher of masses, sizes, and hence densities of the planets, which helps them to estimate their internal composition and raising the number of planets which have been discovered outside the Solar System.
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  • Thumbnails of TNG50 (top left) and SDSS (bottom left) quenched galaxies. The top and bottom right panels show the pixel-wise contributions to the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) for the TNG50 and SDSS galaxies, respectively. See Zanisi et al. (2021) for more details.
    Research news
    Neural networks to distinguish real and simulated galaxies
    Can neural networks distinguish computer simulated galaxy images from observed galaxies? This is the question that has been addressed in this work. For years, reproducing the morphological diversity of galaxies has been a problem for cosmological simulations. The new generation of simulations, such as Illustris TNG, are becoming more and more realistic. But enough to fool a neural network? In this work it is shown that it does not. Using unsupervised deep generative models, it is shown that, despite the fact that realism increases greatly in the last generation of simulations and with
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  • The unprecedented spectropolarimetric observations achieved during the CLASP2 space experiment. For detailed information, see http://ow.ly/S2gS50DF0wS. Credit: NAOJ, IAC, NASA/MSFC, IAS.
    Research news
    Mapping solar magnetic fields from the photosphere to the corona
    The solar chromosphere is the region between the relatively thin and cold photosphere (temperature of a few thousand degrees) and the hot and extended corona (temperatures above a million degrees). Although the chromosphere is much less hot than the corona, it is also significantly denser and thus much more energy is required to sustain it. Moreover, the mechanical energy necessary to heat the corona needs to traverse the chromosphere, making it a crucial interface region to understand how this energy propagates and is released in the most violent activity of the solar upper atmosphere
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  • Visita secretario Estado España Global
    Press release
    The Secretary of State for Global Spain visits the Teide Observatory
    Yesterday there was a visit to the installations of the Teide Observatory (Tenerife) by the Secretary of State for Global Spain, Manuel Muñiz, accompanied by the Delegate of the Government in the Canaries, Anselmo Pestana, and the Deputy Director of the Cabinet, Guillermo Corral. The Deputy Director of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Casiana Muñoz-Tuñón, and the Administrator of the Teide Observatory ( Observatorio del Teide ), Miquel Serra-Ricart, told him about the effort being made in this research centre, and were able to show him some of the telescopes and instruments in the
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