The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is demonstrating the quality and international relevance of the Canary Islands Observatories at the 245th session of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting being held this week in Maryland (USA). This meeting, led by the American astrophysics community, brings together the world's most important research centres in this field to share lines of work and proposals for the present and the future. The IAC delegation in Maryland is headed by the director of the centre, Valentín Martínez Pillet, who is part of the panel of speakers with a

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates in the study of a galaxy that hosts a supermassive black hole with previously unseen characteristics. The source is 1ES 1927+654, a galaxy located about 270 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. It harbors a central black hole with a mass equivalent to about 1.4 million Suns. “In 2018, the black hole began changing its properties right before our eyes, with a major optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray outburst,” said Eileen Meyer, an associate professor at UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County). “Many teams have

An international team of researchers, including staff from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered a planetary nebula that destroyed its own planetary system, conserving the remaining fragments in the form of dust orbiting its central star. To date, more than 5000 exoplanets have been discovered orbiting stars of all kinds and almost every stage of stellar evolution. However, while exoplanets have been discovered around white dwarfs – the final stage in the evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars like the Sun, no exoplanets have been detected in the previous

On January 7, 2025, the European Commission established the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), furthering its mission to become the world’s largest and most powerful observatory for gamma-ray astronomy. The creation of the CTAO ERIC will enable the Observatory's construction to advance rapidly and provide a framework for distributing its data worldwide, significantly accelerating its progress toward scientific discovery. “The ERIC will streamline the construction and operation of the Observatory in a way that will undoubtedly

El Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) rinde homenaje a la historia de la Astrofísica en la isla de La Palma a través de su revista monográfica Paralajes que se distribuye tanto en su edición física como en digital. La revista se elaboró a lo largo del año 2024 bajo la coordinación de la periodista científica y exjefa de la Unidad de Comunicación y Cultura Científica (UC3) del Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Carmen del Puerto, que ha recibido el apoyo del director de la revista Astronomía, Ángel Gómez Roldán: y de la actual jefa de la UC3, Verónica Martín. Además, ha