A team of researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), collaborating with other international institutions, has managed to find new galaxies in the Spiderweb protocluster. This was possible thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, which is a project of the space agencies of the United States (NASA), Europe (ESA) and Canada (CSA). Exploring the populations of galaxies, and discovering their physical properties in large scale structures helps astronomers to understand galaxy formation and how their assembly is determined by their environment. The “ Spiderweb” protocluster

This week, CTAO Managing Director, Stuart McMuldroch, and Construction Programme Manager, Volker Heinz, traveled to the Canary Islands for a productive visit with the hosting partners at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and colleagues from the CTAO Large-Sized Telescope (LST) Collaboration. The team was warmly welcomed at the IAC Headquarters in Tenerife by IAC Director, Valentín Martínez, marking the first official meeting between the two directors since Valentín recently assumed this role. Hosted by Ramón García López, Principal Investigator of the CTAO group at the IAC, the

ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defense performed a flyby of Mars, as part of its gravitational assistance manoeuvre to shorten its journey to the binary asteroid system Didymos. During the flyby, the spacecraft came around 5000 km from the surface of Mars, having also the opportunity to obtain images of its two moons, Deimos (during the approach) and Phobos (when departing Mars). Julia de León, Javier Licandro, and George Prodan, researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, participate in this mission, successfully launched from Cape Cañaveral, Florida (USA) on October 7, 2024