The first Large-Sized Telescope (LST) prototype of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma), has made its first scientific discovery by detecting the source OP 313 above 100 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), a level of energy a billion times higher than the visible light that humans can perceive. It is the most distant quasar ever observed by gamma-ray instruments from the ground. On 15 December, the Large-Sized Telescope (LST) Collaboration announced through an Astronomer’s Telegram (ATel) the detection of the source OP

The distribution of planets in the over five thousand distant solar systems discovered to date forms a complex puzzle. There is a region in the planetary orbit graph, known as the " Neptunian desert", where very few Neptune-like planets with orbits of between two and four days period around their star have been recorded to date. Now, a scientific team led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IAA-CSIC) , using a novel technique, new planets around red dwarf stars located precisely in

An international piece of research, led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has found clues to the nature of some of the brightest and hottest stars in our Universe, called blue supergiants. Although these stars are commonly observed, their origin has been an old puzzle that has been debated for several decades. By simulating novel stellar models and analysing a large data sample in the Large Magellanic Cloud, IAC researchers have found strong evidence that most blue supergiants may have formed from the merger of two stars bound in a binary system. The study is published in the