An international research, led by scientists from the University of Sheffield and with the participation of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, has discovered, using the HiPERCAM instrument of the Gran Telescopio Canarias at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma), an ancient pulsating star in a double star system. The discovery, which is published in the journal Nature Astronomy, provides important information about how stars like our Sun evolve and eventually die.

The IAC presents a public outreach video about the project “Polarized Radiation Diagnostics for Exploring the Magnetism of the Outer Solar Atmosphere” (POLMAG). In this video, several POLMAG scientists explain the basic aspects of the project. The POLMAG research group was created in January 2018 within the framework of the Advanced Grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) to Javier Trujillo Bueno (CSIC Research Professor and IAC Senior Scientist). POLMAG aims at novel advances in the development and application of polarized radiation diagnostic methods for exploring the magnetic

Research led by Artemi Camps, who started it while he was studying for his doctorate in the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and the University of La Laguna, and is now working at the Instituto de Astronomía of the UNAM (México) has discovered an expanding bubble in the disc of a galaxy. With a diameter of 15,000 light years, it is the largest bubble of its type observed in any galaxy. The study has recently been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. A galaxy like the Milky Way is made up of hundreds of thousands of millions of stars, with a mixture

Nature magazine is publishing today a surprising study about the giant, ultra-hot planet WASP-76b in which researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) have taken part. This exoplanet, 390 light years away towards the constellation Pisces, has days when its surface temperatures exceed 2,400 Celsius, sufficiently hot to evaporate metals. Its nights, with strong winds, cool down the iron vapour so that it condenses into drops of iron. This is the first result with the high resolution spectrograph ESPRESSO, an instrument co-directed by the IAC and installed on teh Very Large

An international team of astronomers in the project SPECULOOS, dedicated to the search for habitable planets, with scientists participating from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has discovered an eclipse (termed an occultation) in a peculiar brown dwarf formed by two stars orbiting around each other. The results are just published in the journal Nature Astronomy. The finding was by chance, when the scientists were working on the results from the first light of one of the four telescopes of the project, in Chile. Shortly after the building of the first SECULOOS telescopes, and

To celebrate March 8th, International Women’s Day, a new chapter of the audiovisual series “Girls who broke a glass ceiling looking at the sky” is being premiered. This project was started in 2017 as part of the initiative “The Return of Henrietta Leavitt, from school to a research career, via the Theatre” by the IAC in collaboration with the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), of the Ministry of Science and Innovation. Its objective is to show to the general public the work of women in science, encouraging young girls to opt for careers in science. Previously the series