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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  • Omaira González Martín
    Interview
    OMAIRA GONZÁLEZ MARTÍN: “The Canary Observatories have been essential in the advance of the study of nuclear activity in galaxies”
    For astronomers one of the biggest obstacles is the darkness of the Universe itself, above all the darkness caused by the gas and dust which surround active galactic nuclei, or AGN. These nuclei emit a huge quantity of energy produced by the supermassive black hole onto which matter falls at a considerable rate. The accretion processes are fundamental for the evolution of active galaxies. However these nuclei often remain hidden by the dusty structures, called tori, which surround the central black hole. Studyuing the properties of this circumnuclear dust, the accretion processes, and
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  • Portada capítulo VII serie Niñas
    Press release
    “¿Qué querías ser cuando eras pequeña?”
    La serie audiovisual “Niñas que rompieron un techo de cristal mirando al cielo”, iniciada en 2017 como parte de un proyecto de género del Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), añade un capítulo más (el séptimo) con motivo del “Día Internacional de la Mujer y la Niña en la Ciencia” que se celebra hoy, 11 de febrero. Cada capítulo de la serie recoge en breves declaraciones las historias personales y profesionales de cuatro astrofísicas o ingenieras que trabajan en este centro de investigación. En los vídeos responden a tres preguntas: ¿Qué querían ser cuando eran pequeñas? ¿Qué
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  • Spectral energy distribution (in white; best theoretical fit in blue) of an extremely red old star. The photometric data from Spitzer's IRAC and MIPS instruments are represented in purple. Credits: Dell'Agli et al. (2021) with background infrared image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Meixner(STSCI) and the Sage Legacy Team.
    Research news
    Post-common envelope binaries as the precursors of extremely red old stars
    Modelling dust formation in single stars evolving through the carbon-star stage of the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) (i.e., the late evolutionary stages of Sun-like stars) reproduces reasonably well the mid-infrared colours and magnitudes of most of the C-rich sources in low-metallicity galaxies with known distances like the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The only exception to this is a small subset of extremely red objects (EROs). An analysis of the spectral energy distributions of EROs suggests the presence of large quantities of dust, which demand gas densities in the outflow significantly
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  • Attendees at the 2017 11F activities in La Laguna
    Press release
    11th February, on-line activities to encourage scientific careers for younger girls
    For a further year the IAC is celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science with activities to encourage the interest of the younger girls in scientific and technological careers. According to the report “ Women scientists in figures, 2017” the proportion of women in the total of the researchers in Spain has no trisen in the past 10 years, holding steady at 39%. But worse, at later stages in the research career this pecentage drops to 29%. In order to redress the balance on December 15th 2015 the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed 11th February the
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  • Cartel anunciador del proyecto "Habla con Ellas: Mujeres en Astronomía" edición 202. Diseño: Inés Bonet (IAC)
    Press release
    New edition of “Talk to them: Women in Astronomy”
    Women astronomers and engineers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), from the Canary Observatories, and from other collaborating institutions show their work and answer students’ questions in videoconferences with educational centres throughout Spain . Physics and Engineering are fields which are still see by society as “male professions”, and in which women continue to be under-represented. The challenge of awaking interest in these subjects among students, and especially among girls, means facing up to the idea that they are perceived as difficult and with few attractive
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  • High-resolution images of the bright boulders (arrows) during Hayabusa2 proximity operations. Especially, the images obtained during the first touchdown operation (a-c) show much smaller bright fragments in regolith everywhere (adapted from Fig.1 in Tatsumi et al. 2021).
    Research news
    Collision of C-type Ryugu’s parent body with a rocky object
    Hayabusa2’s optical navigation camera (ONC) found many anomalously bright boulders on the dark surface of the carbonaceous (or C-type) asteroid Ryugu. Observations with ONC and the near-infrared spectrometer (NIRS3) indicates that at least six of those bright boulders exhibit reflectance spectra consistent with exogenous origin; their spectra are similar to rocky (or S-type) asteroids. This means that the bright boulders resulted from collisional mixing between Ryugu’s parent body and S-type asteroid(s). On Bennu, the asteroid explored by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, bright boulders with spectra
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