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.

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  • Grupo Winter School
    Press release
    Winter School was finished on fluids dynamics in Astrophysics
    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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  • 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.
    Research news
    Discovery of a massive black hole companion to a B-type star from radial velocity measurements
    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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  • La galaxia irregular NGC 6240 con tres agujeros negros
    Three supermassive black holes detected in interacting galaxies
    New observations of the NGC 5240 system show for the first time that it comprises three merging galaxies,which explains the rapid evolution of galaxies in the universe and does not contradict its age. This study, led by German researchers from Göttingen and Potsdam, at the suggestion of the researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) Ana Monreal Ibero, has been carried out using a new technique on which the IAC is working, which combines the integral field spectrograph MUSE with adaptive optics on the VLT telescope from Chile. The irregular galaxy NGC 6240 with three black
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  • Investigador Sascha Husa
    Interview
    ENTREVISTA CON SASCHA HUSA. “Esperamos entender el origen y evolución del Universo a través de las ondas gravitacionales”
    Continuamente se buscan nuevos horizontes y fronteras que superar y se detectan nuevas señales, como las ondas gravitacionales producidas en fenómenos cósmicos masivos, también en el Big Bang. LIGO ( Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory ), proyecto en el que colaboran más de mil investigadores de 20 países diferentes, fue precisamente diseñado para detectar estas ondas. Al conseguirlo en 2016, como resultado de la fusión de dos agujeros negros, este observatorio confirmaba una de las predicciones de Einstein en su Teoría de la Relatividad General. Ahora, a esta colaboración
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  • LB-1
    Press release
    Astronomers discover a giant black hole that challenges current models of stellar evolution
    An international team of scientists, led by researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of China and with the participation of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and the Universidad de La Laguna, have observed a stellar black hole with a mass 70 times heavier than the Sun. The giant object, called LB-1, challenges the standard theory of stellar evolution. Its detection has been possible thanks to the exhaustive monitoring carried out during several months with the Gran Telescopio Canarias at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma). The result is published in the
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  • Imagen de stand durante la semana de la ciencia en La Palma
    The XV Science and Innovation Weeks in the Canaries have ended
    The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, (IAC) has participated, with a number of activities, in the XV Edition of the Science and Innovation Weeks organized bby the Canary Agency of Research, Innovation, and the Information Society (ACIISI) of the Government of the Canaries, in this way making a contribution to the popularization of science and technology in the society of the islands. The main theme of the event was the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements, because 2019 is the International Year of the Periodic Table which was proposed by Dimitri Mendeev just 150 years ago.El IAC ha
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