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 M31 Galaxy, more commonly known as the Andromeda Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy situated some 2- 2.5 million light years from us in the direction of the constellation of Andromeda. Credits: Adam Evans/wikipedia.
    The discovery of metal-rich planetary nebulae in the outer regions of the Andromeda Galaxy, using data from the GTC, gives evidence of a possible encounter between galaxies
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  • Figure caption: Left : (FUV − NUV) versus (NUV − [3.6]) color-color diagram. Morphological types are represented by color (see legend). We define the blue and red sequence by dividing the plot into two regions and fitting a least-squares 1-D polynomial (a
    We obtained GALEX FUV, NUV, and Spitzer/IRAC 3.6 µm photometry for >2000 galaxies, available for 90% of the S4G sample. We find a very tight "GALEX Blue Sequence (GBS)" in the (FUV − NUV) versus (NUV − [3.6]) color-color diagram which is populated by irregular and spiral galaxies, and is mainly driven by changes in the formation timescale (τ ) and a degeneracy between τ and dust reddening. The tightness of the GBS provides an unprecedented way of identifying starforming galaxies and objects that are just evolving to (or from) what we call the "GALEX Green Valley (GGV)". At the red end of the
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  • The hypothesis of a universal initial mass function (IMF) - motivated by observations in nearby stellar systems - has been recently challenged by the discovery of a systematic variation of the IMF with the centralvelocity dispersion, σ, of early-type galaxies (ETGs), towards an excessof low-mass stars in high-σ galaxies. This trend has been derived so farfrom integrated spectra, and remains unexplained at present. To testwhether such trend depends on the local properties within a galaxy, we have obtained new, extremely deep, spectroscopic data, for three nearby ETGs, two galaxies with high σ
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  • Schematic picture of a tornado-like magnetic structure. Solid lines are the three-dimensional representation of the magnetic field lines. Dashed lines are thepoloidal field lines in the azimuthal plane.
    Recent high-resolution and high-cadence observations have surprisingly suggested that prominence barbs exhibit apparent rotating motions suggestive of a tornado-like structure. Additional evidence has been provided by Doppler measurements. The observations reveal opposite velocities for both hot and cool plasma on the two sides of a prominence barb. This motion is persistent for several hours and has been interpreted in terms of rotational motion of prominence feet. Several authors suggest that such barb motions are rotating helical structures around a vertical axis similar to tornadoes on
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