A study published recently in Nature magazine, in which Ana Monreal-Ibero, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is a participant, reveals the presence of a hitherto undetected component of the universe: large masses of gas surrounding distant galaxies.

The IAC and the Canary Island Observatories are celebrating this anniversary with a series of activities in the framework of the “Protect your sky” initiative, with which they will remind people of the importance and the scope of the “Law for the Protection of the Astronomical Quality of the Observatories of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias”.

Tomorrow, Friday 28th September is European Researchers’ Night. The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) will take part in this via the Macaronight project, with around twenty talks and workshops will take place throughout the day in the Plaza del Adelantado in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, and in the Espacio Cultural Aguere, in the same municipality.

In the early part of the XXI century, at a still uncertain date. A woman left in the library of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in La Laguna, seven exercise books with astronomical observations made over a hundred years before by a certain Juan Valderrama y Aguilar. As no-one at first realized their importance, the books were neglected for some ten years, until they were rediscovered by accident by researchers from the IAC and research on them began. On Wednesday 26th September at 19.00 h an edition of these observations will be presented in the Museum of Science and the

The participants in the first Hispanoamerican Festival of Authors yesterday visit the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, invited by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), In the afternoon members of the Observatory participated in panel discussion as a tribute to the British scientist Stephen Hawking.

The study, led by Paula Izquierdo, a doctoral student at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL), has gone deeply into the analysis of this exceptional white dwarf, which shows periodic transits produced by fragments of a shredded planetesimal. The observations used for this research were obtained with the Gran Telescopio Canarias and with the Liverpool Telescope.