Investigaciones realizadas desde el Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos demuestran que el objeto transneptuniano 2005 FY9 es muy similar al histórico último "planeta" del Sistema Solar

Estos resultados se publican hoy 12 de enero en un artículo de la revista Astronomy and Astrophysics que ya recibió una atención especial previa en la revista Nature el pasado 5 de enero

Utilizando una técnica innovadora, un grupo de astrofísicos estadounidenses y del IAC descubren un planeta en órbita alrededor de una estrella joven situada a unos 100 años luz de distancia

In August 2006 a new planetary transit was discovered from data from the TrES network. The discovery was confirmed using radial velocity curves obtained with the Keck and characterised with light curves in different filters obtained using two telescopes at the Observatorio del Teide: "IAC80" and "TELAST" (the first result of scientific interest obtained from the latter). The planet discovered, TrES-2, is more massive and somewhat larger than its quasi-homonym TrES-1 (the first exoplanet discovered using the transit method), and follows the expected patterns for this type of object. Its main

It has been discovered that the most evolved intermediate-mass stars in our Galaxy are very rich in rubidium. This finding is the first observational evidence that these stars produce enormous quantities of the radioactive isotope 87Rb, as had been predicted from theoretical models of stellar nucleosynthesis more than 40 years ago. This result provides a new observational perspective on the nucleosynthesis of s-elements in AGB stars and imposes observational constraints on theoretical models, which will surely improve our understanding of the final stages in the evolution of intermediate

Using the IAC's Beowulf group of computers and the National Supercomputing Centre's Mare Nostrum, an IAC team has simulated the process of galaxy fusion by tracking the trajectory and interactions of more than a million particles. These simulations have made it possible to reproduce the behaviour of stellar velocities in elliptical galaxies.