An international scientific team, involving the University of La Laguna (ULL) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has identified the cause of an unusually long dimming of a distant star . The phenomenon is explained by the passage of a substellar object with a giant ring system, similar to a ‘cosmic saucer’, in front of the host star. The star, named ASASSN-24fw, is located in the Monoceros constellation at about 3,000 light-years away from Earth. The star faded steadily for more than nine months between late 2024 and mid-2025 to about 97% dark before returning to its normal

The Museum of Science and the Cosmos (MCC), part of the Autonomous Organization of Museums and Centers of the Cabildo of Tenerife, will host the second session of the scientific outreach series “From the Sky to the Thesis” on Thursday, September 25, at 4:30 p.m. The series is organized in collaboration with the University of La Laguna (ULL) and the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC). The initiative, promoted by doctoral students from the IAC, seeks to bring the main topics of research in astrophysics closer to the public, told in the first person by those who develop them

Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, among the tiniest and faintest galaxies known, may hold the key to understanding one of the Universe’s biggest mysteries: the true nature of dark matter. A new study reveals that even a single collision between dark matter particles every 10 billion years — roughly the age of the Universe — is enough to explain the dark matter cores observed in these small systems. These galaxies, which contain only a few thousand stars, are dominated by dark matter and have relatively simple evolutionary histories. That makes them ideal cosmic laboratories for testing theories