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.

List view
  • A snapshot from TESS of part of the southern sky showing the location of ν Indi (marked by the blue circle), the plane of the Milky Way (bottom left) and the southern ecliptic pole (top). These snapshots come from data collected in TESS observing sectors 1, 12 and 13 Credit: J. T. Mackereth.
    Research news
    TESS satellite dates an ancient collision with our galaxy
    Earlier this year, a team of astrophysicists has revealed new insights on an ancient collision that our galaxy the Milky Way underwent with another smaller galaxy called Gaia-Enceladus early in its history. However the details on how and when that collision happened are not precisely known. The study of a single bright star called nu Indi, for which data from the NASA mission TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), the ESA Gaia mission, and ground-based observations were combined, led to better characterize this event. Indeed, by applying a novel approach based on asteroseismology
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  • RGB image of PSZ1 G158.34-47.49, one of the clusters studied, which has a spectroscopic redshift z=0.311. In the image you can see a gravitational lens arc. The photometric image was taken with ACAM/WHT; the spectroscopic data are from DOLORES/TNG.
    Press release
    IAC Scientists have characterized over 200 new clusters of galaxies first detected by the Planck satellite using the telescopes on La Palma
    An international team led by the group of Cosmology with Galaxy Clusters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), including researchers from the University of Paris-Saclay (France) and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (Garching, Germany) has finished the optical characterization of new clusters of galaxies in the northern hemisphere, detected first by the Planck satellite using tjhe Suyaev-Zel’dovich signal. These studies allow more accurate determination of the mean matter density in the universe and other cosmological parameters. The observations, which have
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  • Three-dimensional visualization of the geometric extent of the chromosphere above active region NOAA 12565. An image of the Earth is added to provide a sense of scale.
    Research news
    A chromospheric resonance cavity in a sunspot mapped with seismology
    Sunspots are intense collections of magnetic fields that pierce through the Sun’s photosphere, with their signatures extending upwards into the outermost extremities of the solar corona. Cutting-edge observations and simulations are providing insights into the underlying wave generation, configuration and damping mechanisms found in sunspot atmospheres. However, the in situ amplification of magnetohydrodynamic waves, rising from a few hundreds of metres per second in the photosphere to several kilometres per second in the chromosphere, has, until now, proved difficult to explain. Theory
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  • Artistic rendition of the re-ionisation process. Each dot is a galaxy, which ionises its surroundings forming a bubble. These bubbles can grow depending of the ionising power of each galaxy. If the galaxies are close together the bubbles can merge and form a much larger bubble. With time all the bubbles will merge till the Universe become re-ionised. Ionisation is the process under which high energy photons from the galaxies kick out the electron from the neutral hydrogen atoms thus leaving them ionised.
    Research news
    An ionised bubble powered by a proto-cluster at z = 6.5
    We show herein that a proto-cluster of Lyα emitting galaxies, spectroscopically confirmed at redshift 6.5, produces a remarkable number of ionising continuum photons. We start from the Lyα fluxes measured in the spectra of the sources detected spectroscopically. From these fluxes we derive the ionising emissivity of continuum photons of the proto-cluster, which we compare with the ionising emissivity required to reionise the proto-cluster volume. We find that the sources in the proto-cluster are capable of ionising a large bubble, indeed larger than the volume occupied by the proto-cluster
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  • Artist's impression of the small fraction of young blue stars in an elliptical galaxy where its bulk of stars is old and red. Created with an image of NASA, ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), with vectorpocket resource (Freepik). Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).
    Research news
    Young stars found in the oldest and most massive galaxies in the Universe
    Elliptical and lenticular galaxies (collectively called early-type galaxies) are the oldest and most massive galaxies in the Universe. These galaxies were built up rapidly (in less than thousand million years) and therefore, their stars are generally ancient and cool, meaning that they mainly shine in the optical and infrared spectral ranges. However, any hot young stars that might be present are difficult to detect in these spectral ranges. The study, based on 30,000 early-type galaxy spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey BOSS has analysed the UV spectral range to detect the young
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  • A realistic artist’s impression of WASP-76b atmosphere
    Press release
    Observed: an exoplanet where it rains iron
    Nature magazine is publishing today a surprising study about the giant, ultra-hot planet WASP-76b in which researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) have taken part. This exoplanet, 390 light years away towards the constellation Pisces, has days when its surface temperatures exceed 2,400 Celsius, sufficiently hot to evaporate metals. Its nights, with strong winds, cool down the iron vapour so that it condenses into drops of iron. This is the first result with the high resolution spectrograph ESPRESSO, an instrument co-directed by the IAC and installed on teh Very Large
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