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.

  • Abundance ratios of oxygen, magnesium and silicon relative to iron for the five stars in the bulge discovered by APOGEE (black filled circles) and literature values for other populations in the bulge (open circles), halo (squares), thin disk (crosses) and
    Despite its importance for understanding the nature of early stellar generations and for constraining Galactic bulge formation models, at present little is known about the metal-poor stellar content of the central Milky Way. This is a consequence of the great distances involved and intervening dust obscuration, which challenge optical studies. However, the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), a wide-area, multifiber, high-resolution spectroscopic survey within Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), is exploring the chemistry of all Galactic stellar populations
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  • Constraints on stellar rotation and planet mass. The dark-red and light-red regions are the 1-σ and 2- σ seismic constraints on stellar rotation in the plane (Ω / ΩSun) - (sin i), where Ω is the bulk angular velocity, ΩSun / 2 π= 0.424 μHz is the solar Ca
    Rotation is thought to drive cyclic magnetic activity in the Sun and Sun-like stars. Stellar dynamos, however, are poorly understood owing to the scarcity of observations of rotation and magnetic fields in stars. Here, inferences are drawn on the internal rotation of a distant Sun-like star by studying its global modes of oscillation. We report asteroseismic constraints imposed on the rotation rate and the inclination of the spin axis of the Sun-like star HD52265, a CoRoT prime target known to host a planetary companion. These seismic inferences are remarkably consistent with an independent
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  • This figure displays the results from the Bayesian comparison for coronal loop models as: M0: uniform flux tubes; M1: density stratified flux tubes; M2: expanding magnetic flux tubes. (a) Marginal likelihood as a function of the observed period ratio, r,
    We present the first application of Bayesian model comparison techniques for solar atmospheric seismology. The detection of multiple mode harmonic kink oscillations in coronal loops enables to obtain information on coronal density stratification and magnetic field expansion using seismology inversion techniques. The inference is based on the measurement of the period ratio between the fundamental mode and the first overtone and theoretical results for the period ratio under the hypotheses of coronal density stratification and magnetic field expansion of the wave guide. We present a Bayesian
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