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 compact radio jet in the center of the Teacup galaxy blows a lateral turbulent wind in the cold dense gas, as predicted by the simulations. Credit: HST/ ALMA/ VLA/ M. Meenakshi/ D. Mukherjee/ A. Audibert
    When matter falls into supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies, it unleashes enormous amounts of energy and is called active galactic nuclei (or AGN). A fraction of AGN release part of this energy as jets that are detectable in radio wavelengths that travel at velocities close to light speed. Our research into the interplay between the jet and the cold gas in the Teacup galaxy helps us to better understand how galaxies evolve. The Teacup is a radio-quiet quasar located 1.3 billion light years from us and its nickname comes from the expanding bubbles seen in the optical and radio
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  • Jet blowing bubbles in the Teacup galaxy
    A study led by Anelise Audibert, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), reveals a process that explains the peculiar morphology of the central region of the Teacup galaxy, a massive quasar located 1.3 billion light-years away from us. This object is characterized by the presence of expanding gas bubbles produced by winds emanating from its central supermassive black hole. The study confirms that a compact jet, only visible at radio waves, is altering the shape and increasing the temperature of the surrounding gas, blowing bubbles that expand laterally. These findings
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  • IAC Women
    The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) celebrates International Women's Day by publicizing the work of the women on the staff, and making a balance sheet of the state of gender equality in the Institute. The IAC started its activities in gender equality in 2008, when the Commission on Equality was founded, with the aim of finding the means and the actions needed for the active incorporationof the principle of effective equality between men and women and designing its first Equality Plan. At the present time the Institute is applying its third Equality Plan, which includes 8
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  • Neutron star
    An international scientific team led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) found a neutron star that captures matter from a companion star with a violent and unstable process. This mechanism, previously observed only in very bright systems with black holes, shows that the so-called “accretion instability” is actually a fundamental physical process. Moreover, this discovery opens a new general scenario that explains the extreme accretion of matter on compact objects. The study is published in the journal Nature. X-ray binaries are systems formed by a compact object, a neutron star
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  • The Open Adminnistration Week aims at bringing Public Administration closer to the general public based on the principle of Open Gevernment. The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias is participating in this edition by offering a number of visits to the La Palma Supercomputing Node between Martch 20th and 22nd. Those interested can inscribe via email. This is an initiative on world wide scale, promoted by the Aliance for Open Government ( Open Gov Week ) which will be celebrated in Spain in 2023 from March 20th to 24th. During this week the Spanish Public Administration and the organizations
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  • Sistema planetario
    20,000 observations from the Calar Alto telescope in Spain are made public, and have led to the discovery of 59 planets, some of them potentially habitable. The study, led by a consortium of Spanish and German institutions, has the prominent participation of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and it is is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The CARMENES project has just pub lished data from about 20,000 observations taken between 2016 and 2020 for a sample of 362 nearby cool stars. The project, which is financed with Spanish and German funds, uses the CARMENES
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