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.

  • The Comité Científico Internacional (CCI) of the Observatorios de Canarias meets in La Laguna / Inés Bonet (IAC)
    The members of the Comité Científico Internacional (CCI) of the Canary Islands Observatories met this week in La Laguna with the aim of discussing and analysing the scientific and technical information of the Observatorios de Canarias by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). The meeting marked the transfer of the vice-presidency of this committee from the past director of the IAC, Rafael Rebolo, to the current director, Valentín Martínez Pillet. The meeting was also attended by the deputy director of the IAC, Eva Villaver, among other participants with different responsibilities
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  • Unidad de foco primario y posicionador de WEAVE
    Using the set of first-light observations from the new William Herschel Telescope Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer (WEAVE) wide-field spectrograph, a team of more than 50 astronomers, led by Dr Marina Arnaudova at the University of Hertfordshire, presents the first WEAVE scientific results on Stephan’s Quintet. This state-of-the-art wide-field spectrograph is a 20-million Euro project that brings together leading experts from around the world. WEAVE is set to revolutionise our understanding of the Universe, offering unprecedented detail, as demonstrated in this new study of Stephan’s Quintet
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  • Young Exoplanet
    Researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in collaboration with other entities, such as NASA , have managed to detect the youngest planet ever found, using the technique of transits. This “baby planet” is paradoxically a giant in orbit round a very young star. The Principal Investigator of this finding, which has been published in the Journal Nature , is Madyson Barber, of the University of North Caroliona at Chapel Hill . Other authors of the article include Felipe Murgas and Enric Palle of the IAC. The discovery was made using the technique of transits. This works
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  • DESI observes the sky from the Mayall Telescope, shown here during the 2023 Geminid meteor shower.  Credit: KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Sparks
    Gravity has shaped our cosmos. Its attractive influence turned tiny differences in the amount of matter present in the early universe into the sprawling strands of galaxies we see today. A new study using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has traced how this cosmic structure grew over the past 11 billion years, providing the most precise test to date of gravity at very large scales. DESI is an international collaboration of more than 900 researchers, included the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), from over 70 institutions around the world and is managed by
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  • alpha_plot_density_gamma_b
    The universality of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is one of the most widespread assumptions in modern Astronomy and yet, it might be flawed. While observations in the Milky Way generally support an IMF that is invariant with respect to the local conditions under which stars form, measurements of massive early-type galaxies systematically point towards a non-universal IMF. To bridge the gap between both sets of evidence, in this work we measured for the first time the low-mass end of the IMF from the integrated spectra of a Milky Way-like galaxy, NGC3351. We found that the slope of
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  • First Meeting of New IAC and CTAO Directors Marks Next Phase of Collaboration
    This week, CTAO Managing Director, Stuart McMuldroch, and Construction Programme Manager, Volker Heinz, traveled to the Canary Islands for a productive visit with the hosting partners at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and colleagues from the CTAO Large-Sized Telescope (LST) Collaboration. The team was warmly welcomed at the IAC Headquarters in Tenerife by IAC Director, Valentín Martínez, marking the first official meeting between the two directors since Valentín recently assumed this role. Hosted by Ramón García López, Principal Investigator of the CTAO group at the IAC, the
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