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.

  • Binary milisecond pulsar
    A team of researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), the University of Manchester and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have detected an anomalously high lithium abundance in the atmosphere of the companion star of a binary millisecond pulsar. The lithium abundance is higher compared to stars with the same effective temperature and high-metallicity stars and so the study provides unambiguous evidence for fresh lithium production. Lithium is a fragile element and in stars similar to the Sun it is gradually destroyed in the interiors via low-temperature
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  • The visit has generated new ideas in common, and has opened the way for collaboration on new international projects, especially, in the field of space domain awareness. Last Thursday, 8th September, a delegation of scientists and upper management from the University of Warwick, together with representatives from the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAAC) visited the scientific instruments which the University has installed at the ORM (La Palma). The group went to the Visitors’ Centre of the ORM, and attended a technical session in it auditórium
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  • Strange landscape of a water world
    Research led by the University of Chicago and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has shown the existence of exoplanets with water and rock around type M dwarf stars, which are the most common in the Galaxy. The results are published in the prestigious journal Science. A detailed analysis of the masses and the radii of all 43 known exoplanets around M stars, which make up 80% of the stars in the Milky Way, has led to a surprising discovery, entirely led by the researchers Rafael Luque, of the University of Chicago and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) and Enric
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  • BL Lac
    The international collaboration Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT), in which researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participate, has discovered rapid and quasi-periodic variations in the observed brightness of the blazar BL Lacertae, located about a billion light-years away. These changes were observed during a strong outburst in 2020 and their origin is associated with a jet of high-energy particles. The study has used data from space satellites combined with observations from ground-based infrastructures, including the Teide Observatory (OT) and the Roque de los
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  • "Los jugadores del Lenovo Tenerife Iván Cruz-Uceda , Sergio Rodríguez y Tim Abromaitis con las nuevas equipaciones inspiradas en el cielo de Canarias en el Observatorio del Teide
    The “gold and black” basketball club yesterday presented its strip designs, inspired by the Canary sky, at an publicity event held at the Aguere Cultural Centre (La Laguna, Tenerife). The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the sports club will hold various events during the season to promote knowledge of astronomy among its fans and its members. Lenovo Tenerife will play three matches in the Endesa League with the “Orion” version of its strip. The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), and the basketball club Lenovo Tenerife have joined forces this season to publicize the
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  • Contexto del modelo a través de un mapa de la temperatura (izquierda) y una imagen sintética de cómo se vería en el extremo ultravioleta con la misión Solar Orbiter/EUI-HRI 174 (derecha)
    A numerical experiment conducted by two researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Daniel Nöbrega Siverio and Fernando Moreno Insertis, has allowed them to show, for the first time, how one of the most widely distributed structures in the solar atmosphere, the coronal bright points, can form and acquire energy by the action of the solar granulation. When the Sun is observed from space detectors of X-rays or the extreme-ultraviolet, its atmosphere is found to be full of bright points, both during solar active epochs when a large number of sunspots is observed, and during
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