The distribution of planets in the over five thousand distant solar systems discovered to date forms a complex puzzle. There is a region in the planetary orbit graph, known as the " Neptunian desert", where very few Neptune-like planets with orbits of between two and four days period around their star have been recorded to date. Now, a scientific team led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IAA-CSIC) , using a novel technique, new planets around red dwarf stars located precisely in

An international study led by Almudena Prieto, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has found places where new stars are forming, as faint star clusters, around the centre of an evolved galaxy. This is the first time that young populations of stars have been picked out and dated in this type of galaxies dominated by very old stars, which can be called “rejuvenated old galaxies”. The research has combined observations from various telescopes, both ground based and space based, and has used innovative techniques of data analysis. The results are published in the