The two spectrographs on the Gran Telescopio Canarias have reached their full operating level and have become two of the most requested instruments for observing time on this major telescope which has produced over 500 publications in high level journals and has accumulated over 10,000 citations.

The Universities of Turku (UTU) and Aarhus (AU) are the new owners of the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) situated in the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM). The two institutions take over from the Nordic Optical Telescope Scientific Associations (NOTSA), a non-profit organization created in 1984 by the Reseearch Councils of Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway, with the later incorporation of Iceland, in 1997. On 1 October, a delegation from both universities took part in a simple event at the ORM, which was also attended by representatives of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

A study carried out by IAC researcher Susana Iglesias-Groth has detected molecules of pure carbon in one of the nearest star formation regions to the Solar System. The results of this work have recently been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Fullerenes are carbon molecules , whose structure contains pentagons and hexagons, which often appear in key molecules for life . They are also the third most stable form of carbon, together diamond and graphite. A study performed by the researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) Susana Iglesias

A team of astronomers of the CARMENES consortium, with participants form the Institutode Astrofísica de Canarias, has discovered a planetary system around the red dwarf star GJ 3512, at some 30 light years from Earth, with an unusual gas giant planet whose excentric orbit could imply the presence of another massive planets. In the study the 40 cm telescope of the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) at the Teide Observatory, was used. This discovery is published today in the journal Science.