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.

Displaying 1 - 6 of 472
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  • Necklace
    The Necklace nebula is a bipolar, post-common-envelope planetary nebula, the central star of which has been shown to have a dwarf carbon star companion. We aim to understand the origins of the Necklace and its dwarf carbon central star. We study the carbon abundance of the nebula through far-ultraviolet spectroscopy obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. Furthermore, through simultaneous modelling of multi-band light and velocity curves, we attempt to constrain the parameters of the central star system. Puzzlingly, we find that the region of the inner nebula observed with the Hubble Space
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  • Two fans of blue and white dots extending up and down from center on a black background
    Last night, the 5,000 fibre-optic ‘eyes’ of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) reached a major milestone, having fully covered the area originally planned for its map of the universe. Thus, DESI’s five-year programme has concluded ahead of schedule and with far more data than expected, resulting in the largest high-resolution 3D map of the universe ever produced. This map will enable researchers to explore dark energy, which accounts for 70% of the universe and drives its accelerated expansion. By comparing how galaxies were distributed in the past with their current
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  • Artist’s impression of the TOI-201 exoplanetary system
    An international team of scientists, including researchers from the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (IAC), has confirmed the existence of three bodies orbiting the dynamic exoplanetary system TOI-201. They include a super-earth (TOI-201 d), a warm Jupiter (TOI-201 b) and a brown dwarf (TOI-201 c). The paper is published in Science Advances. “The goal was to characterize the TOI-201 planetary system to understand not just what planets are there, but how they interact with each other dynamically,” said Ismael Mireles, a PhD candidate in the UNM Department of Physics and Astronomy and
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  • Carlos Blanco, director de estrategia de SENSIA en su visita al IAC junto al responsable de Instrumentación, Marcos Reyes; y el jefe de departamento de Óptica del IAC, José Luis Rasilla.
    El Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias y la empresa tecnológica han firmado un protocolo general de actuación para el desarrollo conjunto de instrumentación avanzada en los rangos MWIR y LWIR . El Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) y la empresa de alta tecnología de imagen infrarroja SENSIA Solutions, S.L. (SENSIA) han formalizado este viernes, 20 de marzo de 2026, un Protocolo General de Actuación con el objetivo de establecer un marco estratégico de colaboración científica y tecnológica . La colaboración se ha formalizado con la firma de este protocolo por parte de Valentín
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  • nanojet
    An international team of researchers led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), has unveiled a breakthrough explanation for the origin of tiny, jet-like plasma ejections in the solar atmosphere, known as “nanojets.” These elusive events which are recently discovered by the NASA’s solar telescopes are thought to play an important role in heating and sustaining the solar corona at temperatures above one million Kelvin. Why Study Nanojets? For decades, solar physicists have been puzzled by the so-called “coronal heating problem.” While the Sun
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  • A comparison between the bright and faint phases of a supermassive black hole
    An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), has observed a dramatic change in a supermassive black hole. Located about 10 billion light-years away, the object dimmed to roughly one-twentieth of its former brightness in just two decades — an extraordinarily short interval on cosmic timescales. The discovery was made within a collaborative observing framework linking Japan’s Subaru Telescope with the GTC in Spain’s Canary Islands at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, in La Palma
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