Yesterday, 30 October 2023, from the telescope itself at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma, the WEAVE instrument, a powerful state-of-the-art multi-fibre spectrograph, was publicly unveiled. The inauguration ceremony brought to La Palma the leaders of the science funding agencies from the partner countries of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (ING), as well as a strong representation from the 500 members of the science teams and the organisations involved in the design and construction of WEAVE, making it the largest ever gathering of people inside the dome
The 19th scientific meeting of CARMENES, a collaboration of more than 100 scientists from 11 Spanish and German institutions aimed at studying extrasolar planets around M-type dwarf stars, the lowest mass stars, was held this week at the IACTEC facilities in La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain). Since it became operational in 2016, CARMENES has analysed more than 360 such stars, leading to the discovery of more than 65 new planets, making it the most efficient instrument and mapper in the study of planets around very low-mass stars, with 30 % of the total number of planets discovered in this range
Using observations made with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) a study led from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) has confirmed that the asteroid 2023 FW14, discovered last year, is accompanying the red planet in its journey around the Sun, ahead of Mars and in the same orbit. With this new member, the group of Trojans which accompany Mars has increased in number to 17. But it shows differences in its orbit and chemical composition which may indicate that it is a captured asteroid, of a primitive type. The results are published in
