Scientists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and the University of California San Diego, detect large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere of the "primitive star" called J0815+4729. This finding, reported in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters today, provides an important clue on how oxygen and other chemical elements were produced in the first generations of stars in the Universe. Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the Universe after hydrogen and helium. It is essential for all forms of life on Earth

The Sun is not the live coal that Anaxagoras described. We can imagine hell in its interior, and we know that there are darker spots on its surface which, when discovered, were shown to be incompatible with the Aristotelian principle of the perfection of the heavenly bodies. We have learned a great deal about our star since then, but even now we do not know the answer to some important questions about the source of energy of our Solar System, the main source of life. These were the words of Jeffrey R. Kuhn, doctor in Physics from Princeton University, and currently Professor at the Institute

From a single bright star in the constellation of Indus, an international team of scientists led by the University of Birmingham, with the participation of scientists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has revealed new insights about an ancient collision between our galaxy, the Milky Way, and another smaller galaxy called Gaia-Enceladus, early in its history. Nature Astronomy publishes these results today. This team adopted the novel approach of applying the forensic characterisation of a single ancient, bright star called ν Indi, visible from the southern hemisphere, as a

This morning, in the Cultural Space of the CajaCanarias Foundation in Santa Cruz de La Palma there was a public presentation of the Report on the Socio-economic impact of the Thirty Metre Telescope on the Island, by the Professor of the Department of Economy, Accountancy, and Finance of the University of La Laguna, its author. The report shows that the installation of the TMT on La Palma would not only be a milestone in the development of astrophysics, but it would have a significant positive economic impact on the Island. As well as Juan José Díaz, the others who spoke before the

This astronomical event will be broadcast live via the channel sky-live.tv in the early hours of January 4th, with the collaboration of the European project EELabs. Together with the Geminids and the Perseids, this is the most intense meteor shower of the year. The three most spectacular meteor showers of the year are the Perseids (in August) the Geminids (in December) and the Quadrantids in the first week of January. Although the Perseids are the best known, the maximum is in a holiday period with mild night-time temperatures, the Geminids and the Quadrantids never let us down, with an

Radioastronomy is one of the branches of observational astrophysics which has experienced considerable growth in recent years. To study the universe at radio frequencies specific instruments: radiotelescopes, are designed. Among the most powerful is the ALMA telescope array in the Atacama Desert (Chile) and in the near future we will see the building of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in Australia and South Africa. Raffaella Morganti, a Senior Astronomer at ASTRON and Professor of Astronomy at the Kapteyn Institute of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, has worked on these and