A recent study analyses data collected at 44 of the darkest places in the world, including the Canary Island Observatories, to develop the first complete reference method to measure the natural brightness of the night sky using low-cost photometers. Of the 44 photometers in the survey, the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma, Canary Islands) stands out at the darkest of all the skies analysed. The night sky is not completely dark; even in the remotest places there is a glow in the sky produced by natural components, both terrestrial and extraterrestrial, and by artificial

On May 5th the Earth will pass through the cloud of dust and small fragments of rock which comet 1P/Halley left behind during one of its approaches to the Sun, giving rise to the meteors known as the Eta Aquariids. The sky-liv.tv channel, in collaboration with the Energy Efficiency Laboratories (EELabs) project coordinated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), will broadcast this meteor shower as part of its activities in “Sounds of the Sky, a Citizen Science project of the FECYT to involve the whole family in classifying meteors, and also to make this task easier for visually

Si hablar en público suele ser un motive de ansiedad, la tensión aumenta todavía más cuando el objetivo es desarrollar una idea compleja en ciencia, como una investigación, un doctorado o nuevos resultados. El veterano curso de la Fundación Dr. Antoni Esteve How to improve your scientific presentations (con más de 25 ediciones presenciales en España y Francia) ha dado el salto en línea con una nueva versión que ofrece numerosas técnicas y consejos prácticos para mejorar las presentaciones orales. Dado que el inglés es la lengua internacional de la ciencia, el curso se desarrolla íntegramente

Daniel Nóbrega Siverio, a postdoctoral researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) was recently awarded the “Early Career Researcher Prize” of the Division of Solar Physics of the European Physical Society (EPS).

A team of researchers, led by the Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio (Incipit-CSIC) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), in collaboration with the team from the Arqueological Zone of Caral (Perú) led by Dr. Ruth Shady Solís, has established the relation between the position of the monuments of the Supe Culture (Perú), their orientations, and some astronomical and topographic features, which opens the way to the analysis of the way the inhabitants of this valley conceived space and time 5000 years ago. The results of the study have just been published in the journal Latin

A researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is the lead author of a study with proposals for “technosignatures” -evidence for the use of technology or industrial activity in other parts of the Universe- for future NASA missions. The article, published in the specialized journal Acta Astronautica, contains the initial conclusions of a meeting of experts in the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life, sponsored by the space agency to gather advice about this topic.