The new astronomical adventure organized by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) together with other educational institutions will take place next month with a program that will revolve around the research of the stars and their planets.

An international team of astronomers, in which the researcher from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and the Universidad de La Laguna David Jones participates, has discovered giant spots on the surface of extremely hot stars hidden in stellar clusters. Not only are these stars plagued by magnetic spots, some also experience superflare events, explosions of energy several million times more energetic than similar eruptions on the Sun. The findings, published in Nature Astronomy, help astronomers better understand these puzzling stars and open doors to resolving other elusive mysteries

This project of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias allows the educational community in Spain to carry out their own research on the universe using professional robotic telescopes. In the Canaries the course has been offered through the Department of Education, Universities, Culture and Sports of the Canary Government.

An international team, in which researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias participated, as well as institutions in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has confirmed the presence of the extrasolar planet Proxima b using measurements of radial velocity with the ESPRESSO spectrograph, on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.

Thanks to data from the Gaia mission, of the European Space Agency (ESA), and international team led by researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has presented a study which shows the crucial role of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy in the evolution of our galaxy. These results, published in the magazine Nature Astronomy, also hint that the Sun might have been formed due to one of the interactions of this nearby galaxy with the Milky Way.