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.

  • Soup of prebiotic molecules

    A study led by the researcher Susana Iglesias of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias has detected the presence of large quantities of complex organic molecules in one of the nearest star forming regions to the Solar System. The results of this have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The scientists Susan Iglesias-Groth, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and Martina Marín-Dobrincic of the Polytechnic University of Cartagena have discovered the presence of numerous prebiotic molecules in the star formation region IC348 of the

    Advertised on
  • Spiderweb galaxy

    An international scientific team, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates, has discovered a large reservoir of hot gas in the still-forming galaxy cluster around the Spiderweb galaxy. The finding reveals that this protocluster, far from dispersing, will end up gravitationally bound for the rest of its existence. Located at an epoch when the Universe was only 3 billion years old, this is the first time such a hot gas has been detected at such distances. The study, published in Nature, confirms that galaxy clusters, one of the largest known structures in the

    Advertised on
  • The compact radio jet in the center of the Teacup galaxy blows a lateral turbulent wind in the cold dense gas, as predicted by the simulations. Credit: HST/ ALMA/ VLA/ M. Meenakshi/ D. Mukherjee/ A. Audibert

    When matter falls into supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies, it unleashes enormous amounts of energy and is called active galactic nuclei (or AGN). A fraction of AGN release part of this energy as jets that are detectable in radio wavelengths that travel at velocities close to light speed. Our research into the interplay between the jet and the cold gas in the Teacup galaxy helps us to better understand how galaxies evolve. The Teacup is a radio-quiet quasar located 1.3 billion light years from us and its nickname comes from the expanding bubbles seen in the optical and radio

    Advertised on
  • Jet blowing bubbles in the Teacup galaxy

    A study led by Anelise Audibert, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), reveals a process that explains the peculiar morphology of the central region of the Teacup galaxy, a massive quasar located 1.3 billion light-years away from us. This object is characterized by the presence of expanding gas bubbles produced by winds emanating from its central supermassive black hole. The study confirms that a compact jet, only visible at radio waves, is altering the shape and increasing the temperature of the surrounding gas, blowing bubbles that expand laterally. These findings

    Advertised on
  • ExoLife Finder (ELF)

    From 13th to 17th of February, in IACTEC, the technical collaboration zone of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, the first scientific meeting of the Laboratory for Innovation in Optomechanics (LIOM) is taking place. This is a project for the development of new optical and mechanical technology which will form part of the next generaton of telescopes, such as the ExoLife Finder (ELF), aimed at the search for life outside the Solar System. The meeting has brought together 30 specialists in optics and photonics from Europe, Canada, and the United States. During the course of this week

    Advertised on
  • Low iron binary recreation

    The nearly primordial origin of an ancient star of the Milky Way confirmed by an international team of researchers thanks to the ESPRESSO spectrograph. Stars with very low content of chemical elements are considered to be the older stars in the Milky Way. Formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, a very small time compared to the age of the Universe, these stars are real fossils which encode the first phases of the chemical evolution of the Universe in their atmosphere. The star SMSS1605-1443, discovered in 2018, was identified as one of the earliest stars in the galaxy, but its

    Advertised on