The OSIRIS instrument on the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) has discovered, on the spiral galaxy Messier 106, a system of globular clusters whose unusual distribution and motion, wich could be a relic from the the “cosmic noon”.

Last Monday the GTC observed the asteroid 2019 DS1 in the context of a collaborative programme between the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the European Space Agency (ESA) in which researchers from the Solar System group at the IAC are participating.

200 nights of observation were needed, from both northern and southern hemispheres, to complete the biggest panorama of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. This IAC project, funded by the FECYT, has obtained the biggest panoramic image ever taken of our Galaxy without the use of professional telescopes.

An international study, using the high-speed HiPERCAM camera, installed in the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), has determined for the first time the mass and radius of one of the oldest stars in our Galaxy.

Researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL) have discovered the remains of a planet inside a disc of debris circling a white dwarf. Thought to be rich in heavy metals iron and nickel which helped it survive destruction of its planetary system. This work, has been published today in Science magazine.

Researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of Cambridge have detected lithium in a primitive star in our galaxy. The observations were made at the VLT, at the Paranal Observatory of ESO in Chile.