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.

  • Turbulence caused by convection beneath the surface of the Sun and other stars produces acoustic vibrations that can be observed through movements on the surface and the resulting variations in brightness. Photograph courtesy of: HAO
    When we look at the Sun we cannot penetrate beyond its outer surface, the photosphere, which emits the photons that make up the radiation we can see. So how can we find out what is inside it?
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  • First results of Herschel and the HerMES extragalactic survey.
    ESA's Herschel Space Observatory was launched on 14 May 2009. After a short commissioning and performance verification period, the science demonstration observations started in September 2009. Herschel is now carrying out routine science observations. The three instruments (SPIRE, PACS and HIFI) are working extremely well. The IAC is part of the SPIRE and PACS instrument consortia and has contributed flying hardware and software. The first results of the many Herschel Key Projects were presented at the ESLAB 2010 symposium in ESTEC (May 2010) and have been published in July 2010 in a special
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  • Caption figure 1: Electron density v. radius de of an HII region, in logarithmic units, for the HII regions in the spiral galaxy M51, showing the relation between these two parameters ( i.e. the electron density varies as the inverse square root of the ra
    Using images of the Advanced Camera for Surveys" of the Hubble SpaceTelescope we have analyzed the global physical parameters of thepopulations of HII regions in two galaxies: M51 and NGC 4449. M51 is a large spiral, in which we have measured and catalogued the Halpha luminosities, the radii, and the positions of more than 2000 of its HIIregions, while NGC 4449 is a dwarf irregular, in which we have catalogued over 200 HII regions. From these measurements we have obtained the mean electron densities, and have derived two simple but powerful relations. The electron density n_e of an HII
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  • Figure Caption: Optical bar fraction of strong (solid black line) and weak+strong (dashedblue line) as a function of the galaxy absolute magnitude in r band (left panel)and galaxy mass (right panel). Red points and black circles represent the strong and w
    In this work we present a recent study of the bar fraction in the ComaCluster galaxies based on a sample of ~190 galaxies selected from theSloan Digital Sky  Survey Data Release 6 and observed with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)  Advanced  Camera for Survey  (ACS).The unprecedented resolution of the HST-ACS  images allows us  to explore the presence of bars, detected by visual classification, throughout luminosity range of 9 mag (-23 < Mr < -14), permitting us to study th poor known region  of dwarf galaxies. We find that  bars are hosted bygalaxies in  a tight range of both  luminosities
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  • Left: comparison of ULAS1350 with the other four known L subdwarfs previously known. Right: Artist view of the orbit and position of ULAS1350 in our Galaxy. As it can be seen from the figure, subdwarfs are located in the halo of our Galaxy.Credits: Nicola
    The Gran Telescopio CANARIAS open new prospects to characterise the oldest population of stars in our Galaxy with the discovery of a cold and distant low-metallicity star A new object with an age of thousands of millions of years and a mass of one tenth of the Sun, placing it at the frontier between low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, has been discovered as the furthest of its class in Milky Way. Nicknamed ULAS1350, this subdwarf could become on of the key element to improve our knowledge on the first steps of the formation of our Galaxy.The team of European astronomers responsible for the
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