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.

List view
  • 1D-LTE oxygen-to-iron abundance ratios [O/Fe] vs. metallicity [Fe/H] of the iron-poor star J0815+4729 (large star symbol) compared with literature measurements from the [O I] forbidden line (diamonds), the near-IR O I triplet (circles), and the near-UV OH lines (squares). The two triangles at [Fe/H] ∼ −3.6 correspond to the oxygen measurement from OH lines in the metal-poor binary stars CS 22876–032 AB (González Hernández et al. 2008).
    Research news
    The extreme CNO-enhanced composition of a primitive iron-poor dwarf star
    We present an analysis of high-resolution Keck/HIRES spectroscopic observations of J0815+4729, an extremely carbon-enhanced, iron-poor dwarf star. These high-quality data allow us to derive a metallicity of [Fe/H] = −5.49 ± 0.14 from the three strongest Fe I lines and to measure a high [Ca/Fe] = 0.75 ± 0.14. The large carbon abundance of A(C) = 7.43 ± 0.17 (or [C/Fe] ∼ 4.49 ± 0.11) places this star in the upper boundary of the low- carbon band in the A(C)–[Fe/H] diagram, suggesting no contamination from a binary AGB companion. We detect the oxygen triplet at 777 nm for the first time in an
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  • Photo of Roger Davies
    Interview
    ROGER DAVIES: “It would be wonderful to have the TMT here in La Palma, at the Roque, and of course there would be the potential for European participation”
    He was one of the “Seven Samurai” who in 1986 published that the Milky Way, together with its neighbour galaxies, in clusters and superclusters, forms a huge concentration of matter which they named the “Great Attractor”. Today, Professor Roger Davies is the President of the European Astronomical Society (EAS), whose Board of Directors recently met at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). Davies, who is Professor at the University of Oxford, worked for many years with the William Herschel and Isaac Newton telescopes, at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory. Because of this, he is
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  • The first one day meeting on the protection of the sky and employment opportunities
    The first one day meeting on the protection of the sky and employment opportunities has been held
    “Future generations have the right to an unscathed, uncontaminated Earth, including the right to a clean sky”, This statement is included in UNESCO’s Declaration of the Rights of Future Generations. A message from José Domingo Fernández Herrera, Director General of the Fight against Climate Change and of the Environment of the Government of the Canaries reminded us during the opening ofthe “Ist meeting about the Protection of the Sky and Employment Opportunities” held yesterday, Tuesday in La Laguna. The meeting was organized by the Starlight Foundation, with the collaboration of the
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  • Stellar mass vs. velocity dispersion relation showing that stellar systems, over 7 orders of magnitude in mass, follow the Virial relation. Small bulges and high redshift red nuggets also follows the relation indicating a common origin.
    Research news
    Red nuggets at the center of nearby galaxies
    The “Lambda Cold Dark Matter” (CDM) cosmological model is the current theory credited for reproducing the physics responsible for the formation and evolution of large-scale galactic systems in an accelerated expanding universe. In this context, the halos of CDM collapse and convert their energy reaching a state of equilibrium, allowing the formation of galaxies when the matter begins to cool. From an observational point of view, the behaviour of the luminous matter (stars and gas) is very different from that of dark matter. However, there are empirical relationships that reflect the
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  • The book cover of “Observing the Sun from Tenerife
    Press release
    Presentation of the book “Observing the Sun from Tenerife. An adventure above the sea of clouds”
    Presentation of the book “Observing the Sun from Tenerife. An adventure above the sea of clouds” “The latitude of the islands, Teide, and the trade-winds have contributed to the story of the Sun in Tenerife”. This phrase by solar physicist Manuel Vázquez Abeledo was noted during the presentation of his most recent book Observing the Sun from Tenerife. An adventure above the sea of clouds (just in Spanish) by another solar physics from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), his friend and colleague José Antonio Bonet, who gave a summary of it. The event took place last Friday at the
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  • A diagram of how Rydberg Enhanced Recombination works. Adapted from Nemer et al. (2019).
    Research news
    Confirming new physics in space
    The interstellar medium is an excellent laboratory to test physical processes that cannot be reproduced in Earth-based laboratories. In this study several nebulae were used as a space laboratory to confirm the existence of an atomic process for which there was no previous experimental confirmation. In 2010, the existence of an atomic process that should occur frequently in astrophysical plasmas throughout the universe was theoretically proposed. The point is that this process — which is termed Rydberg Enhanced Recombination, or RER — had never before been detected, and it’s effectively
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