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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  • The IAC hosts a global meeting of the European project The Whole Sun / Inés Bonet (IAC)
    Press release
    The IAC hosts a global meeting of the European project The Whole Sun, that aims to unravel the mysteries of the Sun
    The Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias hosted this week the global meeting of the members of the European project The Whole Sun , a project approved and funded by the European Research Council (ERC) as part of its Synergy Grant calls. The duration of the project is seven years (from 2019 to 2026) and its full title is: “The whole Sun: untangling the complex physical mechanisms behind our eruptive star and its twins”. The main objective of the ERC’s Synergy Grant calls is to promote the joint work of groups of researchers in different European institutions so that all the necessary tools
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  • Hertzsprung–Russel diagram blue supergiants
    Research news
    Challenging the theoretically predicted mass-loss rate increase of blue supergiants in the bi-stability region of the stellar winds
    The properties of blue supergiants are key for constraining the end of the main sequence phase, a phase during which massive stars spend most of their lifetimes. The lack of fast-rotating stars below 21.000K, a temperature around which stellar winds change in behaviour, has been proposed to be caused by enhanced mass-loss rates, which would spin down the star. Alternatively, the lack of fast-rotating stars may be the result of stars reaching the end of the main sequence. Here, we combine newly derived estimates of photospheric and wind parameters, wind terminal velocities from the literature
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  • La consejera insular de Turismo Raquel Rebollo Morera; el director del IAC, Valentín Martínez Pillet y la consejera insular de Desarrollo Económico, Miriam Perestelo Rodríguez. /Inés Bonet (IAC)
    El Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias agradece el compromiso de la ciudadanía palmera con la protección de sus cielos
    El Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) agradece a la ciudadanía palmera y a sus instituciones su compromiso con la protección de sus cielos en el cumplimiento de la Ley del Cielo y por la cesión de sus cumbres para el estudio científico. Así se ha puesto de manifiesto en la reunión monográfica mantenida por el IAC, el Cabildo Insular de La Palma y los ayuntamientos de la isla celebrada en el Palacio Salazar. En la reunión han participado el director del IAC, Valentín Martínez Pillet; la consejera de Turismo del Cabildo de La Palma, Raquel Rebollo Morera; y la consejera de Promoción
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  • MaNGA galaxies
    Research news
    Constraints on the in situ and ex situ stellar masses in nearby galaxies obtained with artificial intelligence
    The hierarchical model of galaxy evolution suggests that mergers have a substantial impact on the intricate processes that drive stellar assembly within a galaxy. However, accurately measuring the contribution of accretion to a galaxy's total stellar mass and its balance with in situ star formation poses a persistent challenge, as it is neither directly observable nor easily inferred from observational properties. Using data from MaNGA, we present theory-motivated predictions for the fraction of stellar mass originating from mergers in a statistically significant sample of nearby galaxies
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  • The director of IAC, Valentín Martínez Pillet and the team of engineers of the European Solar Telescope, alongside the international panel of reviewers with the telescope model, during the evaluation in Tenerife. / Inés Bonet (IAC)
    Press release
    The European Solar Telescope project under review by an international team of experts
    The IACTEC headquarters has recently hosted the meeting between the engineering team behind the future European Solar Telescope and an international panel composed of some of the world's leading experts in the development of large telescopes and solar observation instrumentation. It is common for major scientific projects to undergo this type of scrutiny during their development as a way to independently verify their quality and viability. The evaluation process began over a month ago with the submission of all the design documentation to the reviewers. In this case, the evaluation focused
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  • ESA’s Hera mission lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space /ESA - S. Corvaja
    Press release
    The IAC is participating in the first European planetary defence mission
    Researchers Julia de León and Javier Licandro of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) are participating in the Hera mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) , successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA) on 7th October at 14:52 UTC. This is the first European mission for planetary defence which together with NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid redirection Test) will study the effects of a technique for diverting asteroids called “ kinetic impactor”. The DART probe crashed into the smaller ( Dimorphos) of the two asteroids which form the binary system Didymos, on September
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