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
  • Representation of the ALISIO-1 satellite. Credit: IACTEC-Space.
    Press release
    The countdown for the launch of ALISIO-1 has begun
    The first Canary Earth Observation Satellite, belonging to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has successfully passed all the pre-launch technical tests, and is on the way to the United States for launch from California before the end of the year. ALISIO-1 ( Advanced Land-Imaging Satellite for Infrared Observations) is the first Canary satellite which will orbit the Earth, in the framework of the ALISIO space programme, led by the IAC and coordinated by the IACTEC-Space group. In 2018, the team gained its first success after the launch of an atmospheric sounding balloon with
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  • Mapa interactivo contaminación lumínica EELabs
    Photomontage
    Un mapa para recuperar la noche
    La Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canaria y el Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias han desarrollado un método para calibrar imágenes nocturnas de satélites a partir de medidas de redes de fotómetros nocturnos. El trabajo, financiado por el proyecto Interreg EELabs, está orientado a evaluar de forma más precisa la contaminación lumínica y su impacto en los ecosistemas naturales de la Macaronesia. Los datos están a disposición de la comunidad científica a través del portal del proyecto. Desde su inicio en 2020, el proyecto Interreg EELabs ha desplegado más de un centenar de sensores en las
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  • Photomontage
    William Herschel Telescope inaugurates its new WEAVE spectrograph
    Yesterday, 30 October 2023, from the telescope itself at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma, the WEAVE instrument, a powerful state-of-the-art multi-fibre spectrograph, was publicly unveiled. The inauguration ceremony brought to La Palma the leaders of the science funding agencies from the partner countries of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (ING), as well as a strong representation from the 500 members of the science teams and the organisations involved in the design and construction of WEAVE, making it the largest ever gathering of people inside the dome
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  • accretion_disks_pulses
    Research news
    A shared accretion instability for black holes and neutron stars
    Accretion disks around compact objects are expected to enter an unstable phase at high luminosity. One instability may occur when the radiation pressure generated by accretion modifies the disk viscosity, resulting in the cyclic depletion and refilling of the inner disk on short timescales. Such a scenario, however, has only been quantitatively verified for a single stellar-mass black hole. Although there are hints of these cycles in a few isolated cases, their apparent absence in the variable emission of most bright accreting neutron stars and black holes has been a continuing puzzle. Here
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  • Pleiades Open Cluster
    Press release
    Open clusters lose stars as they age, study finds
    After comparative studies of a sample of almost 50 open stellar clusters of different ages in the Milky Way, research led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL) with collaboration by the Polytechnic University of Cartagena, shows that when these star clusters age they lose the majority of their less massive members. This result confirms that there are internal dynamical processes in open clusters caused by their long journeys through the Galaxy, which bring about the expulsion of these low mass stars. The study, published in the journal
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  • Photomontage
    The first meeting of the major astronomical observatories in Spain is held in La Palma
    From Monday 23rd to Thursday 26th October, the first meeting of the large astronomical observatories in Spain will be held in the town of Los Cancajos, La Palma. Most of them are scientific projects belonging to the map of the Singular Scientific-Technical Facilities (ICTS) of Spain, grouped in the field of Astrophysics under the coordination of the Astronomy Infrastructure Network (RIA). In this first edition, the participants are the Centro Astronómico Hispano en Andalucía (CAHA), the Gran Telescopio de Canarias (GRANTECAN), the Institute de Radiaoastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM), the
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