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.

  • Artist's impression of a planetary system, with a giant planet in the foreground and one of its moons occulting the central star. Copyright: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Servicio MultiMedia)
    When the first exoplanet was discovered orbiting a star in 1995 the astrophysics community could not have imagined that, two decades later, the study of exoplanets would form one of the fundamental pillars of modern astronomy, and that the number of exoplanets discovered would reach a total of 1000, as attested by the latest edition of The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia. With the excuse of having reached such a round number of planets found we now present you with so key facts on these distant worlds beyond the Solar System. For this we let Hans Deeg and Roi Alonso, researchers at the
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  • The IAC has launched the SolarLab, an outreach project aiming to bring the mysteries of the Sun to secondary schools and colleges in the Canary Islands. The project loans a solar telescope to educational centres for a week so that students can observe the closest star to the Earth. The star has just passed what is known as 'solar maximum', which occurs every 11 years and marks the ideal moment at which to observe and study the Sun. The project will run for two years and will be supplemented with educational courses for teaching staff in the islands in order to improve their knowledge of the
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  • The galaxy we see in the centre is NGC 7674, also known as Markarian 533. This image, from the Hubble Space Telescope, was taken in 2002. The supernova explosion /SN 2011ee/ had not then taken place, so we are unable to identify the progenitor star. The g
    By Natalia Ruiz Zelmanovitch There are many kinds of stars in the Universe that are generally classified according to their brightness and colour. The brighter a star is, the bigger it is, and this property is directly related to the mass and age of the star. The most massive stars rapidly consume all the fuel in their interior, and this means not only that their lives are shorter than those of less massive stars but also that their deaths are spectacular. When they reach their end, they explode as supernovae, providing us, in most cases, with an impressive display in the form of magnificent
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  • Simulation of asteroid 2012 DA14 according to the dimensions determined in the study during its approximation to the Earth on 15 February 2013. Credits: Multimedia Service (IAC)
    On 15 February the asteroid 2012 DA14 came within 27,700 kilometres of the Earth, making it our closest ever encounter of a Near Earth Object (NEO). The study, carried out by planetary scientists, has determined the shape, size and primordial chemical composition of the asteroid. These results will help develop strategies against potentially dangerous asteroids in terms of diverting or destroying them, or mitigating the effects of their impact. Asteroide 2012 DA14 simulation: Preview and spanish description DOWNLOAD VIDEO: mov, 1920x1080p, h264, 403 MB, 36 seconds. This animtion shows
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