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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  • Artist's rendering of 2060 Chiron, an active centaur, surrounded by a faint debris disk. Bright ice deposits and active zones are visible on its surface. Credits: William D. Gonzalez Sierra of the Florida Space Institute
    The IAC puzzle out how the icy objects beyond Neptune give us clues about the formation of the Solar System
    In the outer reaches of the Solar System, beyond the ice giant Neptune, are a series of objects called Centaurs, and transneptunian objects (TNO’s). The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is one of the most advanced international centers for the study of these objects, and co-leads one of the key studies which show what the coldest objects in the Solar Sytem are made of, and how thermal change is produced in their interiors. In two articles recently published in the same volumen of Nature Astronomy , spectra obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have shed new light on
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  • light bridges
    Research news
    Dissecting light bridges: the stratification of their physical properties in geometric height
    Light bridges are elongated and bright structures protruding into the umbra of sunspots. The presence of light bridges has a significant role in the evolution of sunspots and the heating of their overlying atmosphere. Therefore, investigating these structures is crucial to understanding fundamental aspects of sunspots. By applying a novel code based on deep-learning algorithms called SICON to spectropolarimetric observations acquired with the Hinode satellite, we computed atmospheric parameters that allowed us to infer the variation of the physical properties of light bridges on a geometric
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  • Imagen de grupo de la reunión anual del consorcio científico SPECULOOS, en la que participa el Premio Nobel Didier Queloz / Inés Bonet (IAC)
    La Laguna acoge la reunión anual del consorcio científico SPECULOOS, con la participación de Didier Queloz
    La ciudad de La Laguna acoge la reunión anual del consorcio científico SPECULOOS, responsable del telescopio Artemis, ubicado en el Observatorio del Teide. Este encuentro reúne a destacados investigadores de instituciones de renombre internacional, incluyendo el Massachusetts Institute of Techonology (MIT), la Université de Liege, la University of Cambridge y el Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), entre otros centros de investigación. El objetivo principal de las investigaciones que se llevan a cabo con el telescopio Artemis es la detección de planetas de tipo terrestre que orbitan
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  • Sunrise III moments before take-off in July 2024.
    Press release
    The Sunrise III mission obtains data from the Sun with unprecedented resolution in space and time
    At the present time ground-based observatories have a wide range of instruments which can study the solar surface in the visible and infrared ranges. But it is not possible to combine these observations with those in the near ultraviolet, which cover the wavelength range from 200 to 400 nanometres, nor to maintain them for long periods due to the turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere. In this context, the Sunrise III mission, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is collaborating, “ has become the first observatory to obtain spectropolarimetric data simultaneously in the
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  • An illustration of an M-dwarf star covered in starspots. NASA/ESA/STScI/G. Bacon.
    Press release
    A team of astronomers finds clues on the magnetism of a new kind of M dwarf
    A team of astronomers led by ICE-CSIC analyzed for the first time a long radio-observation of a scallop-shell star in a pioneer study. The team observed the star using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) located in Pune (India), and related it to the photometric information from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and Las Cumbres Global Telescope Observatory. Scallop-shell stars are a recently discovered class of young M dwarfs. More than 70% of the stars in the Milky Way are M dwarfs, although there are only around 50 recently confirmed scallop-shell stars. They show
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  • Recreation of a burst, identified as CSS161010, in which a small black hole swallows a star. Credits: Gabriel Pérez (IAC)
    Press release
    Astronomers detected a burst caused by a black hole swallowing a star
    The team led by Claudia Gutiérrez from the ICE-CSIC and IEEC has used the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) and the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT), at the Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), in La Palma. The CSS161010 burst reached its maximum brightness in just 4 days in a small galaxy 500 million light-years away from us. An international scientific team, led by the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) and the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), has managed to detect an exceptionally fast and bright cosmic burst in a small
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