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.

  • Low iron binary recreation
    The nearly primordial origin of an ancient star of the Milky Way confirmed by an international team of researchers thanks to the ESPRESSO spectrograph. Stars with very low content of chemical elements are considered to be the older stars in the Milky Way. Formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, a very small time compared to the age of the Universe, these stars are real fossils which encode the first phases of the chemical evolution of the Universe in their atmosphere. The star SMSS1605-1443, discovered in 2018, was identified as one of the earliest stars in the galaxy, but its
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  • Low iron binary recreation
    An international team of researchers, among them scientists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has confirmed the primitive origen of an old star in the Milky Way, using the ESPRESSO instrument. The stars with the least content of metals are considered to be the oldest in the Milky Way, formed only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, which is a small fraction of the age of the universe. These stars are “living fossils” whose chemical composition gives clues about the first stages of the evolution of the universe. The star SMSS1605-1443 was discovered in 2018 and
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  • Lanzamiento de DRAGO2
    The infrared camera DRAGO-2, developed by the team at IACTEC-Space and integrated into the satellite carrier ION-scv007 Glorious Gratia of the Italian company D-Orbit is now in orbit around the Earth after its successful launch yesterday on board a Falcon 9 rocket of Space-X. The Transporter-6 mission of SpaceX lifted off without a hitch at 14: 56 UT from platform 40 of the Space Force Station at Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA). Yesterday afternoon students, families, the media and IACTEC personnel were in the viewing room which had been installed in the multi-use area of IACTEC in the
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  • HUC and IAC Collaboration
    The Anatomical Pathology service of the Complejo Hospitalario Universitario de Canarias (HUC) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) are partners in the development of a computer application adapting artificial intelligence tools used in astronomy to digitised images of human tissue. The project, called “Patolog-IA”, aims to speed up the interpretation of test results and the diagnosis of colorectal cancer. It is expected that it will also be useful for personalised medicine oriented to other kinds of cancer. Colorectal cancer is one of the most aggressive types of cancer and the
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  • Exo-Earths in GJ 1002
    An international scientific team led by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has discovered the presence of two planets with Earth-like masses in orbit around the star GJ 1002, a red dwarf not far from the Solar System. Both planets are in the habitability zone of the star “Nature seems bent on showing us that Earth-like planets are very common. With these two we now know 7 in planetary systems quite near to the Sun” explains Alejandro Suárez Mascareño, an IAC researcher, who is the first author of the study accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The
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  • Southern Ring Nebula
    The first data show there were at least two, and possibly three, more unseen stars that crafted the oblong, curvy shapes of the Southern Ring Nebula. In addition, for the first time, combining infrared images from James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) with existing data from ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Gaia observatory, researchers were able to determine the precise mass of the central star before the nebula was formed. In this study, led by Macquarie University in Sydney (Australia), around 70 researchers have participated , among them scientists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de
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