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.

  • Tim Bedding at the XXII Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics. Photo: Miguel Briganti, Servicio MultiMedia (IAC)
    Tim Bedding is an excellent observer of oscillations in solar-type stars and red giants. Among his achievements may be counted certain very interesting and widely applied empirical relationships now being used in the CoRoT (COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits) and Kepler missions in order to obtain rapidly global parameters of stars using seismology. Currently, one of his new "work-horses" is studying the“mixed modes”: how they can help to extract information on the evolutionary state of a star. He has also worked on optical interferometry (measuring angular sizes of stars). He is at
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  • Poster of the public lecture on `The Songs of the Stars: The Real Music of the Spheres´. Credit: Miriam Cruz / Museo de la Ciencia y el Cosmos
    Tomorrow, Friday 19th November at 7.00 pm, at the Museo de la Ciencia y el Cosmos in La Laguna, Professor Donald Kurtz of the University of Central Lancashire (United Kingdom) will give a public lecture on `The Songs of the Stars: The Real Music of the Spheres´. The lecture will be in English with simultaneous interpretation into Spanish. We humans are intensely visual creatures: ‘seeing is believing.’ But there are other ways to know the world and universe. For many species of bats ‘hearing is believing.’ 2500 years ago the Pythagoreans believed in a celestial ‘music of the spheres,’ an
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  • Sarbani Basu at the XXII Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics.Photo: Miguel Briganti, Servicio MultiMedia (IAC)
    Sarbani Basu specializes in Helioseismology. In her research she aims to determine, by studying oscillation, the internal structure and dynamics of the Sun and how these characteristics change with solar activity. She is also active in studying other stars, mainly using asteroseismological data obtained by Kepler. A member of the steering committee of KASC (Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium), she heads this international consortium's working group on star clusters and also participates in the modelling of solar-type stars. Likewise, she is interested in the use of seismology in
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  • Steve Kawaler at the XXII Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics.Photo: Miguel Briganti, Servicio MultiMedia (IAC)
    Steve Kawaler investigates the life and death of stars by studying their oscillations by means of Asteroseismology. A foremost specialist in compact objects, such as white dwarfs, he is a past director of the international Whole Earth Telescope network, dedicated to the study of variable astronomical objects; he is currently a leader of one of the teams that are analyzing data from the Kepler mission. With Carl J. Hansen and Virginia Trimble, he coauthored the book ‘Stellar Interiors: Physical Principles, Structure, and Evolution’. President of Division V (Variable Stars) of the
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  • Bill Chaplin at XXII Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics.Photo: Miguel Briganti, Servicio MultiMedia (IAC)
    Bill Chaplin is an excellent communicator, as his students at University of Birmingham (United Kingdom), where he teaches Solar and Stellar Physics, would certainly attest. In recent years, this data analysis expert has worked on BiSON (Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network), a network of six observatories monitoring low-degree   oscillation modes in the Sun. Not long ago, he made the transition from the Sun to other stars and is currently leading a task group working on solar-type stars for the Kepler mission. In this interview he recalls the origins of Helioseismology and clarifies some of
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  • CANARY ISLANDS WINTER SCHOOLS OF ASTROPHYSICS Press Release 12/11/2010 XXII Canary Islands Winter School: Asteroseismology 18/11/2010 The Songs of the Stars: The Real Music of the Spheres Interviews 15/11/2010 Bill Chaplin: “Science would be very boring if all our theories proved correct right from the start, in fact that would be a very unrealistic world” 16/11/2010 Steve Kawaler: “Some of the Asteroseismology early successes came through the work on pulsating white dwarfs in the 1970s through today” 17/11/2010 Sarbani Basu: “Asteroseismology is the only means available with which we can
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