Nature magazine is publishing today a surprising study about the giant, ultra-hot planet WASP-76b in which researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) have taken part. This exoplanet, 390 light years away towards the constellation Pisces, has days when its surface temperatures exceed 2,400 Celsius, sufficiently hot to evaporate metals. Its nights, with strong winds, cool down the iron vapour so that it condenses into drops of iron. This is the first result with the high resolution spectrograph ESPRESSO, an instrument co-directed by the IAC and installed on teh Very Large

An international team of astronomers in the project SPECULOOS, dedicated to the search for habitable planets, with scientists participating from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has discovered an eclipse (termed an occultation) in a peculiar brown dwarf formed by two stars orbiting around each other. The results are just published in the journal Nature Astronomy. The finding was by chance, when the scientists were working on the results from the first light of one of the four telescopes of the project, in Chile. Shortly after the building of the first SECULOOS telescopes, and

To celebrate March 8th, International Women’s Day, a new chapter of the audiovisual series “Girls who broke a glass ceiling looking at the sky” is being premiered. This project was started in 2017 as part of the initiative “The Return of Henrietta Leavitt, from school to a research career, via the Theatre” by the IAC in collaboration with the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), of the Ministry of Science and Innovation. Its objective is to show to the general public the work of women in science, encouraging young girls to opt for careers in science. Previously the series

An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, has found for the first time an unusual star that oscillates on one side due to the gravitational attraction of another nearby star. The study, which is published in the journal Nature Astronomy, uses data from NASA's TESS satellite and has involved the collaboration of citizen scientists.

On March 9th we can see the second “supermoon” of this year, and the last full moon of winter in the northern hemisphere. With the collaboration of the EELabs project, coordinated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, sky-live.tv will broadcast live, from the Teide Observatory, the rise of the “supermoon” which will be aligned in the evening with the shadow of the volcano.