A team of cosmologists from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) and the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) has obtained the most accurate census to date of the dark matter halos of the Universe. The work is based on the development of a new model, called GPS+, capable of predicting how many dark matter halos exist at each stage of cosmic history. In the universe, there are enormous invisible structures surrounding galaxies and galaxy clusters. These are dark matter halos, concentrations of matter that do not emit light and cannot be directly observed, but

An international scientific team, involving the University of La Laguna (ULL) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has identified the cause of an unusually long dimming of a distant star . The phenomenon is explained by the passage of a substellar object with a giant ring system, similar to a ‘cosmic saucer’, in front of the host star. The star, named ASASSN-24fw, is located in the Monoceros constellation at about 3,000 light-years away from Earth. The star faded steadily for more than nine months between late 2024 and mid-2025 to about 97% dark before returning to its normal

Researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), in collaboration with the Instituto de Ciencias del Cosmos de la Universidad de Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Instituto de Estudios Espaciales de Cataluña (IEEC), have carried out the largest observational study to date on massive runaway stars including rotation and binarity in the Milky Way. This work, recently published in Astronomy & Astrophysics , sheds light on how these stellar “fugitives” are launched into space and what their properties reveal about their intriguing origins. Runaway stars are stars that travel through