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.

  • Dust continuum emission at 694 GHz (432 μm) mapped by ALMA in the CND of NGC 1068. The right panel shows a close-up of the dust continuum emission shown in left panel.
    NGC 1068 is the prototypical Seyfert 2 galaxy and a prime example for active galactic nuclei (AGN) unifying schemes. Its central engine is thought to be hidden behind a screen of obscuring material located in a dusty molecular torus of a few parsecs size. Given the distance to the galaxy (D ∼ 14 Mpc), it has been the subject of tens of studies aiming to disentangle what is happening in its central parsecs. We used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) to map the emission of the CO(6–5) molecular line and the 432 μm continuum emission from the 300 pc sized circumnuclear disk (CND) of the
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  • Wide angle view from the Teide Observatory towards the east. Above the horizon you can see the planet Venus, an a little higher up and to the left of Venus is comet Catalina (C/2013 US10). The lights and villages are on Grand Canary. J.C. Casado-staryeart
    Several telescopes at the Teide Observatory (IAC) followed comet Catalina with the aim of characterizing its orbit dynamically. It should be possible to see the central zone of the comet with the naked eye, but to see details you would need binoculars.
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  • The 3.5m telescope on Calar Alto in Southern Spain. CARMENES is installed at this telescope, and will start searching for Earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars in early 2016.  Credits: Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie
    CARMENES, an outstanding novel astronomical instrument, which has been designed to look for Earth-like planets, has successfully passed first “on-sky” tests at the telescope. Scientists and engineers of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) have participated in the design and construction of the new “planet hunter”.
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  • Image composition of meteors observed from the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma, Canary Islands) the night of 14 to 15 December 2015, during the Geminids meteor shower. Credits: J.C. Casado / IAC.
    Every year at about this date the Earth in its orbit round the Sun meets up with a stream of particles from the asteroid 3200 Phaeton, which produces the meteor shower known as the Geminids. This year we had a good opportunity to observe them. The maximum of this shower, which was expected at 18.00 UT yesterday, December 14 th, occurred with the Moon just emerging from new. For that reason the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) wanted to present the spectacle to the general public through its website and the sky-live.tv portal. the meteor shower will be broadcast directly from
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