An international team of astronomers in the project SPECULOOS, dedicated to the search for habitable planets, with scientists participating from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has discovered an eclipse (termed an occultation) in a peculiar brown dwarf formed by two stars orbiting around each other. The results are just published in the journal Nature Astronomy. The finding was by chance, when the scientists were working on the results from the first light of one of the four telescopes of the project, in Chile. Shortly after the building of the first SECULOOS telescopes, and

An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, has found for the first time an unusual star that oscillates on one side due to the gravitational attraction of another nearby star. The study, which is published in the journal Nature Astronomy, uses data from NASA's TESS satellite and has involved the collaboration of citizen scientists.

An international team of researchers led by the University of Warwick, with a member who is a scientist at the IAC has discovered white dwarf with unusual dimensions. This star could be, in fact, the result of the merger of two white dwarfs. The discovery is published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, and could resolve some questions about the evolution of white dwarfs, and about the number of supernova in our Galaxy. The star, which is 150 light years away, was identified by data from the satellite telescope GAIA of the European Space Agency (ESA). Based on these, the astronomers used

A study by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), led by researchers Nushkia Chamba, Ignacio Trujillo and Johan H. Knapen, reveals that the enigmatic ultra-diffuse galaxies, very low-luminosity and low-density star galaxies, are similar in size to dwarf galaxies. The results, which are published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, provide new clues about the number and type of galaxies in our Universe and about the nature of dark matter.

A scientific team, led by the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, with participation from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, confirms the high degree of precision of the new calibration system known as a “laser frequency comb” which could be the key to the detection of planets like the Earth. The study is published in the journal Nature Astronomy.