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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  • Black hole simulation
    Press release
    Powerful warm winds discovered during a neutron star eruption
    An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered blasts of hot, warm and cold winds from a neutron star consuming matter from a nearby star. The study used a combination of observations made with several telescopes, including the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC or Grantecan), located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma). The discovery, published today in the journal Nature, provides new insight into the behaviour of some of the most extreme objects in the Universe. Low-mass X-ray binaries
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  • Plan de Acción Social 2022
    General
    Abierto el plazo de solicitudes del Plan de Acción Social 2022
    El Plan de Acción Social 2022 ya está publicado, puedes consultarlo aquí. El plazo para la presentación de solicitudes está abierto hasta el 31.03.2022, puedes acceder al formulario aquí. Les recordamos que debe presentarse un único formulario de solicitud para la totalidad de las ayudas solicitadas y deben presentarse por correo electrónico y junto con la documentación necesaria escaneada (en un único fichero PDF) a accionsocial2022 [at] iac.es (accionsocial2022[at]iac[dot]es). El archivo PDF donde se adjunte la documentación y la solicitud no deberá exceder los 4MB de tamaño, y deberá nombrarse con el número del DNI/NIF
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  • Image of the Cygnus-X region near the Cygnus OB2 association. 2MASS J20395358+4222505 is the star with the red border (revealing the high extinction) near the top left corner. (Courtesy of the GALANTE project, I.P. J. Maíz Apellániz).
    Research news
    The nature of an extreme B supergiant in Cygnus
    2MASS J20395358+4222505 is an obscured early B supergiant near the massive OB star association Cyg OB2. Despite its bright infrared magnitude (Ks= 5.82) it has remained largely ignored because of its dim optical magnitude (B= 16.63, V= 13.68). In a previous work we classified it as a highly reddened, potentially extremely luminous, early B-type supergiant. We obtained its spectrum in the U, B and R spectral bands during commissioning observations with the instrument MEGARA@GTC. It displays a particularly strong Hα emission for its spectral type, B1 Ia. The star seems to be in an intermediate
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  • Investigadores del IAC en el congreso SSSIF
    Photomontage
    The second phase of the ALISIO-1 mission, which will take the latest version of the DRAGO infrared camera into space, gets under way
    After the excellent results from its predecesor, DRAGO (Demonstrator for Remote Analysis of Ground Observations) the updated version of this instrument, designed to observe the Earth from space in now ready. DRAGO-2 has optics with higher resolution, and fills the need for images in the short wavelength range of the Canaries and of other parts of the world. This marks the start of the stage of design and manufacture of the satellite in which it will be launched. This satellite has been named ALISIO-1 (Advanced Land-Imaging Satellite for Infrared Observations) and will be developed in
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  • 2MASS J20395358+4222505
    Press release
    Astronomers find in the Milky Way an unusual blue supergiant star travelling at high velocity
    An international team of astronomers, led by researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL), has found one of the most massive and luminous stars in our galaxy, behind a dense cloud of interstellar gas and dust. It is a supergiant, with a mass almost 50 times the mass of the Sun, with a radius almost 40 times the solar radius, and a luminosity approaching a million times that of our own star, and has been given the descriptor 2MASS J20395358+4222505. But its most disconcerting aspect for the researchers is a variation in its velocity of
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