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.

  • Firma acuerdo IAC y CNRS
    El Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) y el Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), el mayor organismo público de investigación de Francia, firmaron ayer, reunidos por videoconferencia y en el marco de las actividades de la XXVI Cumbre Hispano-Francesa, un acuerdo por el que se establece la creación del primer laboratorio internacional del CNRS en territorio español. Firmaron el convenio el Dr. Guy Perrin, director del I nstitut National des Sciences de l'Univers ( INSU ) del CNRS, y el Prof. Rafael Rebolo, director del IAC, en presencia de otros miembros directivos y
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  • Ilustración del 8 de marzo: Día Internacional de la Mujer. Crédito: Inés Bonet (IAC).
    “Las mujeres sostienen la mitad del cielo”, dice un proverbio chino y máxima muy presente en el Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), que un año más se suma a la celebración del 8 de Marzo, Día Internacional de la Mujer. Y lo hace con una serie de actividades que, entre otros fines, buscan reivindicar el papel de las mujeres de distintos perfiles y ámbitos -investigación, enseñanza, instrumentación, divulgación, servicios informáticos, instalaciones telescópicas y administración- que trabajan en este centro.
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  • Artistic impression of the surface of Gliese 486 b. Credit: RenderArea.
    We detect a transiting rocky planet with an orbital period of 1.467 days around the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 486. The planet Gliese 486 b is 2.81 Earth masses and 1.31 Earth radii, a composition similar to that of Venus or Earth, as determined from exquisite radial velocity data and photometric light curves. The host star is at a distance of 26 light-years, very bright, and observable from both hemispheres of Earth. The stellar and planet properties indicate that despite the hot surface temperatures it is possible that the planet conserved part of its original atmosphere, making it an
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  • Artist's impression of the atmosphere of Gliese 486b. Credit: RenderArea
    During the past 25 years astronomers have discovered a wide variety of exoplanets, made of rock, ice and gas, thanks to the construction of astronomical instruments designed specifically for planet searches. Also, using a combination of different observing techniques they have been able to determine a large numher of masses, sizes, and hence densities of the planets, which helps them to estimate their internal composition and raising the number of planets which have been discovered outside the Solar System.
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  • Omaira González Martín
    For astronomers one of the biggest obstacles is the darkness of the Universe itself, above all the darkness caused by the gas and dust which surround active galactic nuclei, or AGN. These nuclei emit a huge quantity of energy produced by the supermassive black hole onto which matter falls at a considerable rate. The accretion processes are fundamental for the evolution of active galaxies. However these nuclei often remain hidden by the dusty structures, called tori, which surround the central black hole. Studyuing the properties of this circumnuclear dust, the accretion processes, and
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  • Spectral energy distribution (in white; best theoretical fit in blue) of an extremely red old star. The photometric data from Spitzer's IRAC and MIPS instruments are represented in purple. Credits: Dell'Agli et al. (2021) with  background infrared image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Meixner(STSCI) and the Sage Legacy Team.
    Modelling dust formation in single stars evolving through the carbon-star stage of the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) (i.e., the late evolutionary stages of Sun-like stars) reproduces reasonably well the mid-infrared colours and magnitudes of most of the C-rich sources in low-metallicity galaxies with known distances like the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The only exception to this is a small subset of extremely red objects (EROs). An analysis of the spectral energy distributions of EROs suggests the presence of large quantities of dust, which demand gas densities in the outflow significantly
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