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
  • Artistic representation of the current interaction between the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy and the Milky Way. Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).
    Press release
    The evolutionary history of the Milky Way determined in more detail than ever
    Thanks to data from the Gaia mission, of the European Space Agency (ESA), and international team led by researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has presented a study which shows the crucial role of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy in the evolution of our galaxy. These results, published in the magazine Nature Astronomy, also hint that the Sun might have been formed due to one of the interactions of this nearby galaxy with the Milky Way.
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  • GTC spectrum corresponding to the period when the P-Cyg profiles indicate the highest wind velocity. The insets show a zoom-in of the characteristic P-Cyg blueshifted absorption, indicating a wind velocity above 2000 km/s (Hα; red, dotted-dashed line).
    Research news
    The changing-look optical wind of the flaring X-ray transient Swift J1858.6-0814
    The large amount of mass and angular momentum carried by disc winds makes them key processes to understand accretion onto compact objects, such as black holes and neutron stars. Here we present the discovery of an optical accretion disc wind in the X-ray transient Swift J1858.6-0814, a new binary system discovered in late 2018. Our 90-spectrum data set, taken with the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), reveals the presence of conspicuous P-Cyg profiles in optical lines of helium and hydrogen. The evolution of these features indicates significant variations in the wind velocity, between a
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  • Planet absorption signature. a) In the stellar rest frame, the planetary absorption signal appears close to the expected Keplerian of the planet, superimposed in white with its 1σ uncertainty. Transit contacts are shown by white horizontal dashed lines. The gap around 0 km/s corresponds to the position of the Doppler shadow before its subtraction. b) In the planet rest frame, the shimmer is asymmetric and progressively blueshifts after ingress.
    Research news
    Nightside condensation of iron in an ultrahot giant exoplanet
    Ultrahot giant exoplanets receive thousands of times Earth’s insolation. Their high-temperature atmospheres (greater than 2,000 kelvin) are ideal laboratories for studying extreme planetary climates and chemistry. Daysides are predicted to be cloud-free, dominated by atomic species and much hotter than nightside. Atoms are expected to recombine into molecules over the nightside, resulting in different day and night chemistries. Although metallic elements and a large temperature contrast have been observed, no chemical gradient has been measured across the surface of such an exoplanet
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  • 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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