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.

List view
  • Image of the Cygnus-X region near the Cygnus OB2 association. 2MASS J20395358+4222505 is the star with the red border (revealing the high extinction) near the top left corner. (Courtesy of the GALANTE project, I.P. J. Maíz Apellániz).
    Research news
    The nature of an extreme B supergiant in Cygnus
    2MASS J20395358+4222505 is an obscured early B supergiant near the massive OB star association Cyg OB2. Despite its bright infrared magnitude (Ks= 5.82) it has remained largely ignored because of its dim optical magnitude (B= 16.63, V= 13.68). In a previous work we classified it as a highly reddened, potentially extremely luminous, early B-type supergiant. We obtained its spectrum in the U, B and R spectral bands during commissioning observations with the instrument MEGARA@GTC. It displays a particularly strong Hα emission for its spectral type, B1 Ia. The star seems to be in an intermediate
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  • Investigadores del IAC en el congreso SSSIF
    Photomontage
    The second phase of the ALISIO-1 mission, which will take the latest version of the DRAGO infrared camera into space, gets under way
    After the excellent results from its predecesor, DRAGO (Demonstrator for Remote Analysis of Ground Observations) the updated version of this instrument, designed to observe the Earth from space in now ready. DRAGO-2 has optics with higher resolution, and fills the need for images in the short wavelength range of the Canaries and of other parts of the world. This marks the start of the stage of design and manufacture of the satellite in which it will be launched. This satellite has been named ALISIO-1 (Advanced Land-Imaging Satellite for Infrared Observations) and will be developed in
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  • 2MASS J20395358+4222505
    Press release
    Astronomers find in the Milky Way an unusual blue supergiant star travelling at high velocity
    An international team of astronomers, led by researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL), has found one of the most massive and luminous stars in our galaxy, behind a dense cloud of interstellar gas and dust. It is a supergiant, with a mass almost 50 times the mass of the Sun, with a radius almost 40 times the solar radius, and a luminosity approaching a million times that of our own star, and has been given the descriptor 2MASS J20395358+4222505. But its most disconcerting aspect for the researchers is a variation in its velocity of
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  • Diego Blas
    Interview
    DIEGO BLAS: “We are in a golden period when the connection between theory and observations is increasingly necessary"
    The gravitational force needed for the universe to evolve from when it was almost uniform, during the Big Bang, until galaxies, stars, and planets were formed is provided by the “dark matter”. But in spite of the essential role of this basic component, which is estimated to make up some 80% of the matter in the universe, scientists know virtually nothing about its nature, behaviour, and composition, which is one of the main challenges in current physics and cosmology. Aiming to give answers to these questions the researcher Diego Blas, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics of King’s
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  • ALMA cuásar
    Press release
    Supermassive black holes change the central regions of galaxies
    Cristina Ramos Almeida, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has led research which used data from the ALMA telescope in Chile to understand how supermassive black holes impact the host galaxies they inhabit. The results are published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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