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 EST team and the review panel during the live sessions of the Preliminary Design Review held at IACTEC (Tenerife) on October 21st–22nd, 2025.
    The European Solar Telescope (EST) project has reached a decisive stage, with the completion of the PDR (Preliminary Design Review) of the Buildings and Civil Works, which was given a very positive evaluation by the panel of experts. This marks the start of the detailed design and construction phase of the infrastructure which will house the largest solar telescope in Europe. The review, which began on September 2nd, concluded with in-person meetings on October 21st and 22nd at the IACTEC facilities in Tenerife. During these sessions, experts in different fields discussed the main aspects of
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  • Didier Queloz during his lecture in the IAC Aula
    The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) welcomed the visit of Professor Didier Queloz, Nobel Laureate in Physics and co-discoverer of the first exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star. Professor Queloz's stay at the IAC has focused on instrumental development and technological collaboration. As part of his agenda, he also gave a lecture entitled ‘Exoplanets: the next frontier’ in the IAC Lecture Hall. The researcher visited the IAC to supervise the installation of a new high-stability spectrograph on the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma
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  • John Beckman, investigador emérito del IAC
    John Beckman, Profesor de Investigación Emérito del CSIC vinculado al Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), ha sido galardonado con el Premio a la Investigación en la tercera convocatoria de los Premios de la Feria de la Ciencia de La Orotava. Este galardón subraya la amplia y fructífera carrera de Beckman en el ámbito de la Astrofísica y su labor crucial en la promoción del conocimiento científico desde las Islas Canarias. Formado en Física Teórica y Astrofísica en la Universidad de Oxford, Beckman realizó un postdoctorado en Berkeley (California), trabajó en el Jet Propulsion
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  • The founding director of the IAC, Francisco Sánchez  (1936-2025)
    The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) announces the death of its founding director, Professor Francisco Sánchez Martínez, whose determination led to the creation of one of Europe's leading research centres and two of the world's finest astrophysical observatories: the Teide Observatory in Tenerife and the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma. He passed away today in Madrid, where he had been living for the last few years, at the age of 89. The director of the IAC, Valentín Martínez Pillet, emphasises that "Professor Sánchez's legacy is incalculable. He was a man who paved
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  • Vegetation moisture maps taken by space camera based on uncooled InGaAs technology
    The European Patent Office (EPO) has granted the IAC a patent on an invention developed within IACTEC-Space . This technology improves the quality of images obtained by high-performance cameras under the demanding conditions found in space. The effectiveness of this technology has already been tested on three space missions, applying it to the DRAGO (Demonstrator for Remote Analysis of Ground Observations) cameras, developed at the IAC for Earth observation from space. Carlos Colodro, electronics engineer at IACTEC-Space and the main person responsible for this development, comments that
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  • Valentín Martínez Pillet, director del IAC, y Francisco García, rector de la ULL, en la sede del IAC
    Una delegación de la Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), encabezada por el rector Francisco García, ha realizado una visita institucional al Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), reforzando así el compromiso de colaboración y la estrecha relación que mantienen ambas instituciones, claves para el desarrollo científico y tecnológico de Canarias. El encuentro ha servido para revisar el estado del convenio que mantienen ambas instituciones y revisar algunas áreas de mejora para la renovación del mismo en materia de investigación, docencia y divulgación científica, además de aspectos
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