Galaxy-cluster gravitational lenses can magnify background galaxies by a total factor of up to ~50. Here we report an image of an individual star at redshift z = 1.49 (dubbed MACS J1149 Lensed Star 1) magnified by more than ×2,000. A separate image, detected briefly 0.26″ from Lensed Star 1, is probably a counterimage of the first star demagnified for multiple years by an object of ≳3 solar masses in the cluster. For reasonable assumptions about the lensing system, microlensing fluctuations in the stars’ light curves can yield evidence about the mass function of intracluster stars and

We report ground-based spectrophotometry of KIC 8462852, during its first dimming events since the end of the Kepler mission. The dimmings show a clear colour-signature, and are deeper in visual blue wavelengths than in red ones. The flux loss' wavelength dependency can be described with an Ångström absorption coefficient of 2.19±0.45, which is compatible with absorption by optically thin dust with particle sizes on the order of 0.0015 to 0.15 μm. These particles would be smaller than is required to be resistant against blow-out by radiation pressure when close to the star. During

Researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) confirm the first detection of a relic galaxy with the Hubble Space Telescope. The results of this research are published today in Nature magazine.

A new study published in the Astrophysical Journal by Hector Socas-Navarro, a researcher at the IAC, examines the possibility of detecting hypothetical artificial satellites orbiting around other worlds.

An international team in which researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL) are participating, observes how the magnetic waves which propagate through the solar atmosphere heat its outer layers. The results of this research are published today in the magazine Nature Physics.

Galaxy formation entails the hierarchical assembly of mass, along with the condensation of baryons and the ensuing, self-regulating star formation. The stars form a collisionless system whose orbit distribution retains dynamical memory that can constrain a galaxy's formation history. The ordered-rotation dominated orbits with near maximum circularity λz≃1 and the random-motion dominated orbits with low circularity λz≃0 are called kinematically cold and kinematically hot, respectively. The fraction of stars on `cold' orbits, compared to the fraction of stars on `hot' orbits, speaks directly