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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  • MaNGA galaxies
    Research news
    Constraints on the in situ and ex situ stellar masses in nearby galaxies obtained with artificial intelligence
    The hierarchical model of galaxy evolution suggests that mergers have a substantial impact on the intricate processes that drive stellar assembly within a galaxy. However, accurately measuring the contribution of accretion to a galaxy's total stellar mass and its balance with in situ star formation poses a persistent challenge, as it is neither directly observable nor easily inferred from observational properties. Using data from MaNGA, we present theory-motivated predictions for the fraction of stellar mass originating from mergers in a statistically significant sample of nearby galaxies
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  • ESA’s Hera mission lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space /ESA - S. Corvaja
    Press release
    The IAC is participating in the first European planetary defence mission
    Researchers Julia de León and Javier Licandro of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) are participating in the Hera mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) , successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA) on 7th October at 14:52 UTC. This is the first European mission for planetary defence which together with NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid redirection Test) will study the effects of a technique for diverting asteroids called “ kinetic impactor”. The DART probe crashed into the smaller ( Dimorphos) of the two asteroids which form the binary system Didymos, on September
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  • Artist’s impression of the accoustic oscillations of normal (“baryonic”) matter, taken from one of thousands of simulations used in the study/ Francisco-Shu Kitaura & Francesco Sinigaglia
    Press release
    The light from quasars, a key to the measurement of the expansion of the distant universe
    The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in collaboration with the University of Geneva (Switzerland), the University of Osaka (Japan), and the University of Zhejiang (China) has made a key contribution to a more precise measurement of the expansion of the Universe. This is because they have made an improvement in the precision of the calculation of the scale of the universe in its early stages using the analisis of the distribution of gas in intergalactic space, measurements which reach back to epochs between 10,000 and 12,000 million years ago. This result comes from the análisis of
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  • Action space (normalized to the sum of the three actions of motion, Jtot) of Gaia RVS stars
    Research news
    The Metal-Poor Edge of the Milky Way’s Thin Disk
    The formation and evolution of the disk of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, remains an enigma in astronomy. In particular, the relationship between the thick disk and the thin disk —two key components of the Milky Way— is still unclear. Understanding the chemical and dynamical properties of the stars within these disks is crucial, especially in the parameter spaces where their characteristics overlap, such the metallicity regime around [Fe/H] ~ -0.7, which marks the metal-poor end of the thin disk, higher than that of the thick disk. This is often interpreted as an indication that the thin disk
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  • Simulation illustrating the distribution of dark matter particles expected in a low-mass galaxy if the dark matter did not collide (in orange, concentrated towards the center) versus the observed dark matter (in blue, far more dispersed) / Gabriel Pérez (IAC)
    Press release
    Researchers from the IAC have discovered that dark matter experiences forces beyond gravity
    The existence of dark matter is likely one of the most perplexing problems facing the scientific community, and unraveling its nature has become one of the primary goals of modern physics. In simple terms, we do not know what dark matter is made of, despite accounting for 85% of all the matter in the Universe. A study led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias concludes that dark matter does not behave as described by the dominant paradigm, which states that dark matter particles only interact with each other and with ordinary matter through gravity. The IAC study reveals that dark
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  • Asteroid reflectance spectra from Gaia DR3
    Research news
    Asteroid reflectance spectra from Gaia DR3: Near-UV in primitive asteroids
    Asteroids are the remnants of the planetary formation in the Solar System and so, their study helps us to understand the conditions during the early stages of the formation of our planetary system. Among asteroids, those classified as primitives present similar spectra to that of carbonaceous chondrites, i.e., they are rich in carbon and organic compounds and silicates altered by the presence of liquid water (phyllosilicates). Primitive asteroids are well characterized in various wavelength regions, showing their most diagnostic feature at 3μm. However, there is a lack of information in the
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