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.

List view
  • AU mic b light curves from TESS and Spitzer IRAC at 4.5 μm (purple filled circles). The transit model (orange curve) includes a photometric model that accounts for the stellar activity modelled with a Gaussian Process (GP), which is subtracted from the data before plotting. The frequent flares from the stellar surface are removed with an iterative sigma-clipping.
    Research news
    Discovery of a young forming planet around the nearby star AU Mic
    AU Microscopii (AU Mic) is the second closest pre-main-sequence star, at a distance of 9.79 parsecs and with an age of 22 million years . AU Mic possesses a relatively rare and spatially resolved edge-on debris disk extending from about 35 to 210 astronomical units from the star , and with clumps exhibiting non-Keplerian motion . Detection of newly formed planets around such a star is challenged by the presence of spots, plage, flares and other manifestations of magnetic ‘activity’ on the star . Here we report observations of a planet transiting AU Mic. The transiting planet, AU Mic b, has
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  • Artist's impression of a blazar
    Press release
    The Gran Telescopio Canarias finds the farthest black hole that belongs to a rare family of galaxies
    An international team of astronomers has identified one of the rarest known classes of gamma-ray emitting galaxies, called BL Lacertae, within the first 2 billion years of the age of the Universe. The team, that has used one of the largest optical telescope in the world, Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), located at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (Garafía, La Palma), consists of researchers from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM, Spain), DESY (Germany), University of California Riverside and Clemson University (USA). The finding is published in The Astrophysical Journal
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  • Simulation of the OSIRIS-REx "touch-and-go" mission in Nightingale crater.
    Press release
    Touching an asteroid and coming back: OSIRIS-REx and Bennu
    This Tuesday October 20th at around 23.12 hr (Canary time) the NASA space probe OSIRIS-REx will make its first attempt to collect samples from the asteroid (101955) Bennu. The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has played an active role in the mission since 2011. Researchers Julia de León, Javier Licandro, Eri Tatsumi and Juan Luis Rizos, who are members of the science team of OSIRIS-REx will be present telematically at the meeting organized by this NASA mission so that the science team can follow in real time this dangerous maneuvre¸ using the SamCam camera on board the probe. This
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  • Left: Artistic representation of the current interaction between the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy and the Milky Way. Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC). Right: Detailed evolutionary history of the Milky Way unveiled using Gaia data. Three clear star formation enhancements can be spoted.
    Research news
    The role of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy in the evolution of our Galaxy
    The European Space Agency's Gaia mission is revolutionising our understanding on how the Milky Way, the spiral galaxy we inhabit, has formed and evolved. Gaia is measuring the apparent luminosities, colours, positions, motions, and the chemical composition of an unprecedentedly large number of individual stars in our Galaxy. In particular, combining apparent luminosities with distances to these stars, here we have computed the intrinsic luminosity of 24 million stars within a sphere of 6500 light years around our Sun. Comparing such luminosities and colours with accurate models of stars we
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  • Optical image of the Perseus molecular cloud, a widely-known region of intense stellar formation. The interstellar dust, which generates the AME, is clearly visible, as it reflects light from nearby stars. Image credit: APOD 2017 January 14, Lóránd Fényes.
    Research news
    Cosmic amorphous dust in the interstellar medium as a possible explanation for the Anomalous Microwave Emission
    The main emission mechanisms of the interstellar medium (ISM) in the spectral range between the radio and the far infrared are very well characterised and understood, both observationally and theoretically, for decades. However, in the late 90s a new mechanism was discovered in the microwaves, that has been coined “anomalous microwave emission” (AME). A basic feature of this emission is its tight spatial correlation with the thermal emission from ISM dust grains. This means that the AME observed intensity is stronger in regions with a higher abundance of ISM grains. This led to the proposal
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  • Image and amplification (in colour) of the ultra-diffuse galaxy Dragonfly 44 taken with the Hubble space telescope. Many of the dots on the galaxy are the globular clusters studied in this article to explore the distribution of dark matter. The galaxy is so diffuse that other galaxies can be seen behind it. Credit: Teymoor Saifollahi and NASA/HST.
    Press release
    The puzzle of the strange galaxy made of 99.99% dark matter is solved
    At present, the formation of galaxies is difficult to understand without the presence of a ubiquitous, but mysterious component, termed dark matter. Astronomers have measure how much dark matter there is around galaxies, and have found that it varies between 10 and 300 times the quantity of visible matter. However, a few years ago, the discovery of a very diffuse object, named Dragonfly 44, changed this view. It was found that this galaxy has 10,000 times more dark matter than the stars. Taken back by this finding, astronomers have made efforts to see whether this object is really anomalous
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