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.

  • Activiy in Asteroid Bennu
    CAPTION: Composite view of particle ejection from the surface of asteroid Bennu on January 6, 2019. This image was produced by combining two exposures taken by the NavCam 1 imager: a short exposure (1.4 ms) showing the asteroid followed by a longer exposure (5 s) to show the particles. First results on the analysis of several particle ejection episodes imaged by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft have been presented in a Science paper, co-authored by Julia de León and Javier Licandro of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at asteroid Bennu on December
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  • Cartel Conferencia vuelta al mundo
    The lecture will be given by the researcher from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and Titular Professor at the University of La Laguna (ULL), César Esteban, next Thursday, 12th December at 19:00 h in the Museum of Science and the Cosmos, of Museums of Tenerife, in the framework of the acts commemorating the V Centenary of the first Circumnavigation of the World . The first circumnavigation of the world was an epic which gave rise to the discovery of new territories, seas, islands, and cultures, but also new parts of the sky previously unknown to Europeans. This talk, (free
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  • Eclipse de Sol
    Caption: Total solar eclipse from Novosibirsk (Russia). In a total eclipse of the Sun, the Moon exactly covers the disk of the Sun. For a few minutes there is almost total darkness (in broad daylight) and you can see the sun's corona, the stars and the brightest planets. Credits: J.C. Married & D. Lopez - starryearth.com. Shelios 2008. An international team led by the University of Queen, of Belfast, and in which the researcher of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) Andrés Asensio Ramos participates, discovers why the magnetic waves inside the Sun strengthen and grow as
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  • Grupo Winter School
    For ten days, more than sixty doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers from different countries participated in the XXXI Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics, which this year focused on computational fluid dynamics for astrophysical uses. Its participants, more than 30% were women, which is considered one of the successes of this School of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC). The design of complex algorithms with modern computer architectures and code optimization to achieve maximum performance has a large number of applications for differents fields of
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  • Artist view of the gamma-ray burst GRB 190114C, discovered by the MAGIC telescopes on January 14, 2019. This discovery unveils, for the first time, the most energetic component of these cosmic events. Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz (IAC).
    Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are brief and extremely powerful cosmic explosions. They are thought to result from the collapse of massive stars or the merging of neutron stars in distant galaxies. They commence with an initial, very bright flash, called the prompt emission, with a duration ranging from a fraction of a second to hundreds of seconds. The prompt emission is accompanied by the so-called afterglow, a less brighter but longer-lasting emission over a broad range of wavelengths that fades with time. The first GRB detected by the MAGIC telescopes, known as GRB 190114C, reveals for the
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  • a) radial velocity curves and orbital fits for the B-star (purple) and its dark companion (orange), the latter extracted from the wings of the Hα emission (panel c). b) Residuals obtained after subtracting the best orbital models from the velocity points.
    All stellar-mass black holes have hitherto been identified by X-rays emitted from gas that is accreting onto the black hole from a companion star. These systems are all binaries with a black-hole mass that is less than 30 times that of the Sun. Theory predicts, however, that X-ray-emitting systems form a minority of the total population of star–black-hole binaries. When the black hole is not accreting gas, it can be found through radial-velocity measurements of the motion of the companion star. We report here radial-velocity measurements taken over two years of the Galactic B-type star, LB-1
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