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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  • Artistic representation of Mercury transit
    Press release
    Mercury passes across the face of the Sun for the fourth time in the present century
    The transit of the planet will take place next Monday, November 11, from 12: 36h to 18: 04h. It will last almost five and a half hours, and will be broadcast entirely and live from the Canary Islands Observatories. Transits of the Inner Planets - Venus and Mercury - are rarer than the eclipses of Sun and Moon. On average we will have 13 transits of Mercury per century. The last transit of Venus was June 2012. We had transits of Mercury in the years 2003, 2006 and 2016 and the next one will not occur until 2032. Few readers of this article will have seen Mercury, a very small planet. Ganymede
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  • Rafel Rebolo y Yoshihiro Miwa
    Press release
    The Consul of Japan in the Canary Islands visits the IAC
    The Consul of Japan in the Canary Islands Yoshihiro Miwa and his wife Ruriko Miwa recently visited the facilities of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in La Laguna and the Observatorio del Teide in order to know the work on research and technological development carried out in this center of scientific excellence, as well as current and future collaborative projects with the Japanese country. In the OT they could get to know some of its main telescopes such as GREGOR, currently the largest solar telescope in Europe; the QUIJOTE experiment, dedicated to the characterisation of
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  • Amanar telescopios Tinduf
    Press release
    Amanar: an astronomical seed planted in Tindouf
    An international team of astronomers, science educators, and film-makers, with participation from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) made a ten day visit to the Saharaui refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, and organized Astronomy outreach and educational activities, within the framework of the project “Amanar, under the same sky”.
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  • Poster of the Weeks of Science and Innovation in the Canary Islands
    Press release
    The IAC is participating in the Weeks of Science and Innovation in the Canaries
    The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) will participate with a number of different activities in Tenerife and La Palma within the framework of the Weeks of Science and Innovation organized by the Canary Agency for Research, Innovation, and the Information Society (ACIISI) of the Canary Regional Government, from 6th to 24th of November. The main aim of these weeks is to promote and popularize scientific and innovative knowledge among the citizens, as well as to encourage the participation of the different participants in the system of R+D*I in the Archipelago. Each year this event
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  • Upper panel: artistic view of the merger of Gaia-Enceladus with the Milky Way progenitor, and the CMD inferred for their stars 10 billion years ago. Lower panel: artistic view of the current Milky Way and the CMD of the stars in the halo near the Sun, as observed by the Gaia satellite.
    Research news
    The early sequence of events that shaped the Milky Way
    Among the myriad discoveries presented in the second data release of the Gaia mission, there was an enigmatic color-magnitude diagram (CMD) of Milky Way halo stars, showing a striking double (blue/red) sequence. The blue sequence was linked to a major merger that our Galaxy experienced early in its history (Gaia-Enceladus). The origin of the red sequence was unclear, and it was generally associated, because of its chemical composition, with the Milky Way thick disk. However, the lack of accurate ages precluded a clear understanding of its nature. We compared this double-sequenced observed
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  • A view of the Mayall Telescope (tallest telescope at right) at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. (Credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab)
    Press release
    DESI opens its 5.000 eyes to capture the colors of the Cosmos
    The new instrument, the result of an international collaboration of almost a hundred institutions, including the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, has made its first trial observation. Designed to explore the mystery of dark energy, its installation is about to be completed at the Mayall telescope of the Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona (United States).
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