An international scientific team, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates, has discovered a large reservoir of hot gas in the still-forming galaxy cluster around the Spiderweb galaxy. The finding reveals that this protocluster, far from dispersing, will end up gravitationally bound for the rest of its existence. Located at an epoch when the Universe was only 3 billion years old, this is the first time such a hot gas has been detected at such distances. The study, published in Nature, confirms that galaxy clusters, one of the largest known structures in the

The Japanese ambassador to Spain, Takahiro Nakamae, visited the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM) in the municipality of Garafía (La Palma) last weekend, 25th and 26th March. The Japanese delegation was completed by Kensuke Katsuda, Second Secretary; Yoji Kitamura, Councillor for Economic Affairs and Akira Kusunoki, Consul of Japan in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. They were received by the director of the IAC, Rafael Rebolo, the vice-director, Casiana Muñoz and the administrator of the ORM, Juan Carlos Pérez Arencibia. The ambassador's visit began with a meeting with the president of

A study led by Anelise Audibert, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), reveals a process that explains the peculiar morphology of the central region of the Teacup galaxy, a massive quasar located 1.3 billion light-years away from us. This object is characterized by the presence of expanding gas bubbles produced by winds emanating from its central supermassive black hole. The study confirms that a compact jet, only visible at radio waves, is altering the shape and increasing the temperature of the surrounding gas, blowing bubbles that expand laterally. These findings

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) celebrates International Women's Day by publicizing the work of the women on the staff, and making a balance sheet of the state of gender equality in the Institute. The IAC started its activities in gender equality in 2008, when the Commission on Equality was founded, with the aim of finding the means and the actions needed for the active incorporationof the principle of effective equality between men and women and designing its first Equality Plan. At the present time the Institute is applying its third Equality Plan, which includes 8

An international scientific team led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) found a neutron star that captures matter from a companion star with a violent and unstable process. This mechanism, previously observed only in very bright systems with black holes, shows that the so-called “accretion instability” is actually a fundamental physical process. Moreover, this discovery opens a new general scenario that explains the extreme accretion of matter on compact objects. The study is published in the journal Nature. X-ray binaries are systems formed by a compact object, a neutron star