2012 DA14: 49,000 kilometres in 106 minutes

The popular magazine Astronomy, one of the most widely read in the English-speaking world gives second place in its annual discovery league table an investigation led by the IAC, first place going to the discovery of the Higgs boson. More than a thousand years after the event occurred, the research team has determined that it originated in the collision and subsequent fusion of two white dwarf stars. Last September, the journal Nature dedicated its cover to a Spanish investigation led by Jonay González Hernández, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). The

2012 DA14 will pass some 27,700 kilometres from the surface of the Earth next Friday, 15 February. It will be the closest ever non-impacting encounter since the orbits of these bodies have been studied, although it won't be visible to the naked eye

On Friday night, 15 February, asteroid 2012 DA14 maked a close approach to our planet. In Spain, it first was seen from the peninsula at 21:00 local time (UT 20:00*) and half-an-hour later it was visible from the Canaries at 20:30 local time (UT 20:30). It was the closest approach by an asteroid since we have been able to predict their orbits. The IAC will show direct time-lapse videos on this page, as well as links to retransmissions. (*) In winter Universal Time (UT) coincides with local Canarian time. Uno de los vídeos ha sido seleccionado como Astronomical Image of the Day JUST TO GIVE

IAC researchers have confirmed the possible existence of large fullerene molecules in the Universe. These are the most complex molecules discovered to date

The Universe in 3D, a brief presentation, will open the exhibition in Tegueste next Saturday, 19 January, at 19:30 in the Prebend Pacheco Hall