Scientists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and the University of California San Diego, detect large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere of the "primitive star" called J0815+4729. This finding, reported in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters today, provides an important clue on how oxygen and other chemical elements were produced in the first generations of stars in the Universe. Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the Universe after hydrogen and helium. It is essential for all forms of life on Earth

From a single bright star in the constellation of Indus, an international team of scientists led by the University of Birmingham, with the participation of scientists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has revealed new insights about an ancient collision between our galaxy, the Milky Way, and another smaller galaxy called Gaia-Enceladus, early in its history. Nature Astronomy publishes these results today. This team adopted the novel approach of applying the forensic characterisation of a single ancient, bright star called ν Indi, visible from the southern hemisphere, as a

Radioastronomy is one of the branches of observational astrophysics which has experienced considerable growth in recent years. To study the universe at radio frequencies specific instruments: radiotelescopes, are designed. Among the most powerful is the ALMA telescope array in the Atacama Desert (Chile) and in the near future we will see the building of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in Australia and South Africa. Raffaella Morganti, a Senior Astronomer at ASTRON and Professor of Astronomy at the Kapteyn Institute of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, has worked on these and

Researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF, Italy) have shown that massive early-type galaxies keep on forming stars, even though at a very slow rate. The results of this work, whose first author is the doctoral student at the IAC/ULL Núria Salvador-Rusiñol, are published today in the journal Nature Astronomy. Elliptical and lenticular galaxies (collectively called Early-Type galaxies) are the oldest galaxies in the Universe. They are also the most massive galaxies in the Universe, reaching up to 100 times the mass of the

Caption: Total solar eclipse from Novosibirsk (Russia). In a total eclipse of the Sun, the Moon exactly covers the disk of the Sun. For a few minutes there is almost total darkness (in broad daylight) and you can see the sun's corona, the stars and the brightest planets. Credits: J.C. Married & D. Lopez - starryearth.com. Shelios 2008. An international team led by the University of Queen, of Belfast, and in which the researcher of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) Andrés Asensio Ramos participates, discovers why the magnetic waves inside the Sun strengthen and grow as