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.

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  • Raffaella Morganti
    Interview
    RAFFAELLA MORGANTI: "The first image of a black hole was an important milestone for astrophysics"
    Radioastronomy is one of the branches of observational astrophysics which has experienced considerable growth in recent years. To study the universe at radio frequencies specific instruments: radiotelescopes, are designed. Among the most powerful is the ALMA telescope array in the Atacama Desert (Chile) and in the near future we will see the building of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in Australia and South Africa. Raffaella Morganti, a Senior Astronomer at ASTRON and Professor of Astronomy at the Kapteyn Institute of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, has worked on these and
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  • galaxias elipticas
    Press release
    Young stars found in the oldest and most massive galaxies in the universe
    Researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF, Italy) have shown that massive early-type galaxies keep on forming stars, even though at a very slow rate. The results of this work, whose first author is the doctoral student at the IAC/ULL Núria Salvador-Rusiñol, are published today in the journal Nature Astronomy. Elliptical and lenticular galaxies (collectively called Early-Type galaxies) are the oldest galaxies in the Universe. They are also the most massive galaxies in the Universe, reaching up to 100 times the mass of the
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  • Artist view of the gamma-ray burst GRB 190114C, discovered by the MAGIC telescopes on January 14, 2019. This discovery unveils, for the first time, the most energetic component of these cosmic events. Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz (IAC).
    Research news
    Discovery of the highest-energy photons from a gamma-ray burst by the MAGIC telescopes
    Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are brief and extremely powerful cosmic explosions. They are thought to result from the collapse of massive stars or the merging of neutron stars in distant galaxies. They commence with an initial, very bright flash, called the prompt emission, with a duration ranging from a fraction of a second to hundreds of seconds. The prompt emission is accompanied by the so-called afterglow, a less brighter but longer-lasting emission over a broad range of wavelengths that fades with time. The first GRB detected by the MAGIC telescopes, known as GRB 190114C, reveals for the
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  • Eclipse de Sol
    Press release
    Scientists find the explanation at the high temperatures of the solar corona
    Caption: Total solar eclipse from Novosibirsk (Russia). In a total eclipse of the Sun, the Moon exactly covers the disk of the Sun. For a few minutes there is almost total darkness (in broad daylight) and you can see the sun's corona, the stars and the brightest planets. Credits: J.C. Married & D. Lopez - starryearth.com. Shelios 2008. An international team led by the University of Queen, of Belfast, and in which the researcher of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) Andrés Asensio Ramos participates, discovers why the magnetic waves inside the Sun strengthen and grow as
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  • a) radial velocity curves and orbital fits for the B-star (purple) and its dark companion (orange), the latter extracted from the wings of the Hα emission (panel c). b) Residuals obtained after subtracting the best orbital models from the velocity points.
    Research news
    Discovery of a massive black hole companion to a B-type star from radial velocity measurements
    All stellar-mass black holes have hitherto been identified by X-rays emitted from gas that is accreting onto the black hole from a companion star. These systems are all binaries with a black-hole mass that is less than 30 times that of the Sun. Theory predicts, however, that X-ray-emitting systems form a minority of the total population of star–black-hole binaries. When the black hole is not accreting gas, it can be found through radial-velocity measurements of the motion of the companion star. We report here radial-velocity measurements taken over two years of the Galactic B-type star, LB-1
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  • LB-1
    Press release
    Astronomers discover a giant black hole that challenges current models of stellar evolution
    An international team of scientists, led by researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of China and with the participation of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and the Universidad de La Laguna, have observed a stellar black hole with a mass 70 times heavier than the Sun. The giant object, called LB-1, challenges the standard theory of stellar evolution. Its detection has been possible thanks to the exhaustive monitoring carried out during several months with the Gran Telescopio Canarias at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma). The result is published in the
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