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
  • From left to right: Aleix Roig, Ignacio Trujillo y Raúl Infante-Sáinz. Credit: Alejandra Rueda Moral (IAC).
    Press release
    IAU Symposium: Professional and Amateur astronomers, united in the same cause
    During the past week over a hundred specialists from all over the world have been meeting in La Laguna to discuss the study, in different areas of astrophysics, of the faintest and most diffuse objects in the sky. But no only professional astronomers have attended the meeting, organized by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The participation of amateur astronomers is of importance for improving our knowledge of these “ghostly” structures.
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  • Round table of the summer school "Acercate al Cosmos"
    Press release
    Ending of the course for teachers “Get close to the Cosmos”
    For the fourth successive year the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and the National Institute for Educational Technology and Teacher Training (INTEF), in collaboration with the International Menéndez Pelayo University (UIMP) has given teachers of secondary and pre-university education the opportunity to get to know the latest discoveries in astrophysics in a course given by professionals, thereby acquiring the tools for using them afterwards in the classroom.
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  • Fernando Moreno Insertis
    Press release
    A study of the whole Sun
    The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded one of its prestigious “ERC Synergy Grants” to a team led by Fernando Moreno Insertis, researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and Professor at the University of La Laguna (ULL) as a member of a consortium of five European institutions.
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  • Artist’s impression of a planetary fragment orbits the star SDSS J122859.93+104032.9, leaving a trail of gas in its wake. Credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick.
    Research news
    A planetesimal orbiting within the debris disc around a white dwarf star
    Numerous exoplanets have been detected around Sun-like stars. These stars end their lives as white dwarfs, which should inherit any surviving planetary systems. In fact, many white dwarf stars show signs of having accreted smaller bodies, implying that they may host planetary systems. A small number of these systems contain gaseous debris discs, visible through emission lines. Here, we report a stable 123.4-minute periodic variation in the strength and shape of the Ca II emission line profiles originating from the debris disc around the white dwarf SDSS J122859.93+104032.9. We used numerical
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  • Hα+[N II] imaging of the super-remnant in M31N 2008-12a taken with the Liverpool Telescope (left), and the Hubble Space Telescope and WFC3 (right).
    Research news
    A giant interstellar bubble being grown in the Andromeda galaxy
    The combination of a white dwarf mass close to the Chandrasekhar limit (1.4 solar masses) and a fast hydrogen accretion rate (10 -7 solar masses per year) from a companion star leads to frequent thermonuclear runaways in the accumulated envelope of gas on the white dwarf. These are known as nova eruptions and have recurrence times of years to decades. In this work we report that the recurrent nova with the shortest recurrence timescale known (approximately once a year), M31N 2008-12a in the Andromeda galaxy, is surrounded by a giant shell with a projected size of about 134 by 90 pc that is
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