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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  • Pleiades Open Cluster
    Press release
    Open clusters lose stars as they age, study finds

    After comparative studies of a sample of almost 50 open stellar clusters of different ages in the Milky Way, research led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL) with collaboration by the Polytechnic University of Cartagena, shows that when these star clusters age they lose the majority of their less massive members. This result confirms that there are internal dynamical processes in open clusters caused by their long journeys through the Galaxy, which bring about the expulsion of these low mass stars. The study, published in the journal

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  • Photomontage
    The first meeting of the major astronomical observatories in Spain is held in La Palma

    From Monday 23rd to Thursday 26th October, the first meeting of the large astronomical observatories in Spain will be held in the town of Los Cancajos, La Palma. Most of them are scientific projects belonging to the map of the Singular Scientific-Technical Facilities (ICTS) of Spain, grouped in the field of Astrophysics under the coordination of the Astronomy Infrastructure Network (RIA). In this first edition, the participants are the Centro Astronómico Hispano en Andalucía (CAHA), the Gran Telescopio de Canarias (GRANTECAN), the Institute de Radiaoastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM), the

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  • Photomontage
    The IAC organises the third technical conference of the Research Results Transfer Offices in the Canaries

    The IAC's Institutional Actions and Transfer Office (OTAI) held the third edition of the technical conference of the Research Results Transfer Offices (OTRIs) in the Canary Islands on La Palma. This meeting brought together fifty management teams and institutional representatives from a dozen public institutions of the archipelago to advance in the consolidation of collaborative work towards a Canary Islands Network of Knowledge Transfer Offices and R&D&I project management. The opening session was moderated by Anselmo Sosa, manager of the OTAI on behalf of the IAC, accompanied by the

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  • Photomontage
    The Space Working Group of the EU's Competitiveness and Innovation Council gets to know the Canary Islands Observatories

    Members of the Space Working Group of the Competitiveness and Innovation Council of the European Union (Space Group) held a working meeting in San Cristóbal de La Laguna and visited the Teide Observatory and the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on 19 and 20 October respectively. The Space Group is responsible for the development of European space policy and related legislation.The visits are included in the activities within the framework of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union and were organised by the Permanent Representation of Spain to the European Union. A

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  • Research news
    Dating stars with magnetic activity

    Stellar ages are key to several fields of astrophysics such as exoplanet research, galactic-archeology, and of course stellar physics. Obtaining the ages of stars is however not straightforward and requires stellar modeling. The most widely used technique only requires stellar colors or temperature and surface gravity, but the uncertainties are quite large. This technique is most efficient for stars belonging to clusters, as they were born from the same molecular cloud and share the same ages. In the last decades, based on the study of stellar acoustic waves, asteroseismology became the most

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  • Poster of the CLASP2.1 Scientific Meeting
    Photomontage
    The IAC organises the CLASP2.1 space mission scientific meeting

    From 18 to 20 October, scientists from the USA, Japan and Europe meet at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) to discuss the results of the third CLASP space experiment to study the magnetic field of the solar chromosphere and the science of future solar missions. Several years ago, an international scientific team began developing a series of novel suborbital space experiments, with the goal of measuring the intensity and polarization of the ultraviolet radiation of the Sun emitted from one of the outer layers of its atmosphere, the chromosphere, very close to the base of the

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