This week Thomas Soifer, Gregory Fahlman, and Masanori Iye, members of the Board of Governors of the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT) International Observatory, visited during the week the installations of the headquarters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), in La Laguna, and the Teide and Roque de los Muchachos Observatories.

The Franco-Algerian researcher, who received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in developing methods to cool and trap atoms using laser radiation visited the installations of the Headquarters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in La Laguna and the Teide Observatory accompanied by the Director and researchers at the Institute.

Specialists from different research institutions, such as the European Space Agency (ESA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Centre for Astrobiology (CAB), the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) dealt, for two days, with questions related to the present and future of this telescope.

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) deeply regrets the death of the eminent theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Honorary Professor of this research centre.

Antonia María Varela and Héctor Socas will take part in the round-table discussion on Outreach to be held on the second day.

The most recent edition of "Paralajes" magazine, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) deals with the role of women in astronomy, picking out important figures in the history of this science until the present day, with special emphasis on the women scientists and engineers working in the IAC projects. This magazine is part of the project "The return of Henrietta Leavitt", an IAC initiative with the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) collaboration.