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.

  • Image of the stellar tidal stream surrounding the spiral galaxy NGC 5907 obtained with an amateur robotic telescope in the mountains of New Mexico.Credit: R. Jay Gabany
    An international team of astronomers has identified huge star streams in the outskirts of two nearby spiral galaxies. For the first time, they have obtained a panoramic overview of an example of galactic cannibalism similar to that involving the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy in the vicinity of the Milky Way. The detection of these immense stellar fossils confirms the predictions of the cold dark matter model of cosmology, which proposes that present-day grand design spiral galaxies were formed from the merging of less massive stellar systems. The first of these debris structures surrounds the
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  • Mapa RES
    La supercomputación y la astrofísica centrarán una serie de cinco seminarios que comenzará a impartirse mañana y hasta el próximo 10 de abril en el Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) con motivo del funcionamiento, con éxito y a pleno rendimiento, del superordenador LaPalma. Investigadores nacionales e internacionales de reconocido prestigio abordarán temas de interés científico, desde la Física Solar y la formación de sistemas planetarios hasta la evolución de supercúmulos galácticos. Expertos de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid y de las universidades de Zurich (Suiza) y Copenhague
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  • The double sunset in the movie "Star Wars" might not be longer pure movie fiction. The detection of a body orbiting around a binary star system in the constellation Drago leads to the possibility that this might be the first planet found in association with two suns. The eclipses between the stars gave the initial lead to an international team of scientists led by Hans Deeg of the Astrophysical Institute of the Canary Islands. The candidates to illuminate this supposed planet are two binary stars 52 light years away from Earth, which orbit each other so close that they eclipse themselves
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  • Superordenador LaPalma
    LaPalma es capaz de realizar 4,5 billones de cálculos en un segundo Cinco meses después de su puesta en marcha a pleno rendimiento, el superordenador LaPalma “da a luz” sus primeros logros científicos. Tras procesar datos del Sol captados por el satélite japonés Hinode y compararlos con experimentos numéricos en tres dimensiones, un equipo de astrónomos encabezado por el Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) ha conseguido explicar con éxito la formación de los chorros de rayos X en los agujeros coronales, zonas donde el campo magnético solar enlaza con el espacio exterior. Los
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