Using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international scientific team, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates, has identified water vapour in the atmosphere of WASP-18 b, a massive extrasolar planet, a so-called hot Jupiter, with a temperature of around 2.700 °C. The result is published in the journal Nature. Exoplanet WASP-18 b is about 400 light-years from Earth, is 10 times more massive than Jupiter and has an orbital period of less than a day. Its extreme proximity to its star, its relative closeness to Earth, and its large mass
International research, with the participation of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), reveals that perturbations in the magnetic fields of galaxies may be related to star formation. The study has mapped the magnetic fields of about fifteen galaxies in the vicinity of the Milky Way. The data were obtained with the HAWC+ instrument on board SOFIA, an airborne infrared telescope on a Boeing 747 that was operational until September 2022. The results are published in The Astrophysical Journal. For decades, astronomers have studied the forces that govern the interior of galaxies -
An international team of scientists, with participation by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL) have found a barred spiral galaxy, similar to the Milky Way, in the early universe, when it was only 15% as old as it is now. The galaxy, ceers-2112, is the most distant barred spiral observed, and its existence poses a challege to the current model of formation and evolution of galaxies. The discovery, made with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is published in the journal Nature. In astrophysics studying the structure of galaxies