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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  • La nebulosa Cabeza de Caballo
    Press release
    Euclid release its first images: the dazzling edge of darkness
    ESA’s Euclid space mission reveals its first full-colour images of the cosmos. Never before has a telescope been able to create such razor-sharp astronomical images across such a large patch of the sky, and looking so far into the distant Universe. These images illustrate the telescope's potential to create the largest and most accurate 3D map of the Universe to date. The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has led one of the first five Euclid Early Release Objects (ERO) programmes. 95% of our cosmos appears to be made of these mysterious ‘dark’ entities But we don’t understand what
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  • Poster of the XXXIV Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics. Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz y Daniel López / IAC
    Press release
    The Local Group as a benchmark for Galaxy Evolution, on IAC Winter School
    La XXXIV Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics, organizada por el Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) y la Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), tendrá lugar entre los días 8 y 15 de noviembre. En esta edición, cerca de 60 estudiantes de 15 países se reunirán para conocer los últimos avances en el campo de la evolución de galaxias, con el Grupo Local como punto de referencia. Durante una semana, el edificio IACTEC, en el Parque Científico y Tecnológico de Tenerife (La Laguna), acogerá a 60 estudiantes de máster, doctorado y postdoctorado para nutrirse sobre las novedades del panorama
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  • Photomontage
    William Herschel Telescope inaugurates its new WEAVE spectrograph
    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
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  • Photomontage
    The Infrared: beyond the rainbow
    From today the new edition of the monographic magazine Paralajes, produced and edited by the IAC, is available in both digital and paper formats. This volume is on the theme of astronomy in the infrared, radiation outside the range visible to the human eye, very important in the history of the IAC, described in detail in over 170 pages. A major fraction of the energy emitted within the universe is in the infrared, but we cannot detect it except using instruments specially developed to do this. The IAC has been aware of this since its beginning, and has been developing infrared instruments
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  • INT and 2023 DZ2
    Photomontage
    2023 DZ2 asteroid will not collide with Earth, study finds
    An international scientific team, in which researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participate, confirms that the asteroid, discovered with the Isaac Newton telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma), follows an orbit synchronised with that of Jupiter, which reduces the probability of a collision with our planet in the coming decades. The celestial body is very solid, metallic, rotates ten times every hour and is about 40 metres long. The study is published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Asteroid 2023 DZ2, detected in February with the
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  • Toi-1853 b
    Press release
    The densest “Neptune” ever observed
    An international team of researchers, with participation from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, has discovered an extremely dense Neptune-sized planet, which challenges the conventional theories about the formation and evolution of planets. It was first identified with NASA’s TESS satellite, and the present studies were made with the HARPS-N spectrograph on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG), at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma, Canary Islands). The results of the study have been published in the journal Nature. It is called TOI-1853b and is really
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