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.
Completely autonomous, not invasive, and low cost. This is the new SG-WAS (SkyGlow Wireless Autonomous Sensor) which will help to measure the impact of artificial night lighting on the natural protected areas of Macaronesia.
Between 3rd and 8th October the Conference “Dark and Quiet Skies for Science and Society” will be held in La Palma. It will convene a small group of specialists from throughout the world to suggest solutions to the problems facing Astronomy and citizens in general due to the increase of artificial lighting, the increase in radio signals produced by technological development, and the impact of the recent satellite constellations. Question: What is the objective of this Conference? Reply: In October 2020 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) together with the United Nations’ Office for
The black holes at the centres of galaxies are the most mysterious objects in the Universe, not only because of the huge quantities of material within them, millions of times the mass of the Sun, but because of the incredibly dense concentration of matter in a volume no bigger than that of our Solar System. When they capture matter from their surroundings they become active, eventually giving rise to the ejection of huge amounts of energy. It is however difficult to detect the black hole during these capture episodes because the event is rare. We detected l ong and narrow dust filaments
An international team led by researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has uncovered, with an new high degree of detail, the physical and chemical effects of the impact of a protostellar jet in the interior of the Orion Nebula. The study was made using observations with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and 20 years of images with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The observations show evidence of compression and heating produced by the shock front, and the destruction of dust grains, which cause a dramatic increase in the gas phase abundance of the atoms of iron, nickel
The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has received and will appeal the sentence, which is not firm, related to the cancelling of the concession for the land which should house the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT) in La Palma. In 2019 the Cabildo of La Palma, following approval by a full session of the Town Council of Puntagorda, and a detailed environmental study, conceded to the IAC the land on which the TMT could be built. This concession was made conditional on the decision within a few years, which have not yet expired, that the International TMT Observatory would decide to build it
In 1998, the journal Nature published a seminal letter concluding that the mysterious polarization signal that had been recently discovered in the light emitted by the sodium atoms of the solar atmosphere implies that the solar chromosphere (a very important layer of the solar atmosphere) is practically unmagnetized, in sharp contradiction with common wisdom. This paradox motivated laboratory experiments and theoretical investigations, which instead of providing a solution, raised new issues and even led some scientists to question the quantum theory of radiation-matter interaction. In an