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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  • Solar corona in visible light during a solar eclipse
    Photomontage
    A novel code for exploring the magnetic field of the solar corona
    The POLMAG research group of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has released the public version of P-CORONA, a novel computer program for calculating the intensity and polarization of the light emitted by the million-degree plasma of the solar corona. This plasma diagnostic technique allows scientists to study the magnetic field of the solar corona by comparing their calculations with observations from the most advanced solar telescopes, such as DKIST and Aditya-L1. The solar corona is the outermost region of the solar atmosphere, where the explosive events that can seriously
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  • Research news
    Scientific results with the QUIJOTE-MFI wide survey: The anomalous microwave emission in our Galaxy and M31
    In the 90s, the COBE satellite discovered that not all the microwave emission from our Galaxy behaved as expected. Part of this signal was later assigned to a fresh new emission component, spatially correlated with the Galactic dust emission, which showed greater importance in the microwave range of frequencies. It has been named since as “anomalous microwave emission”, or AME. The current main hypothesis to explain the AME origin is that it is emitted by small dust particles which undergo fast spinning movements. In Fernández-Torreiro et al. (2023), we study the observational properties of
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  • Distant galaxies identified by JWST
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    Astronomers discover that the first galaxies had very different shapes to today's galaxies
    Thanks to images obtained by the James Webb Telescope (JWST), an international scientific team in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participates has been able to verify that galaxies in the early universe are usually flat and elongated, and not round or spiral like the nearest galaxies. International research has found, by analysing high-resolution, infrared images of the JWST, that flattened oval disc and tube-shaped galaxies were much more common when the universe was between 600 million and 6 billion years old. In contrast, the nearest galaxies have clearly defined
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  • Black hole of Andromeda
    Press release
    Observers measure how Andromeda’s central black hole is fed
    A team of scientists led by the Observatory of Munich University and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias have obtained direct visualization of the process of feeding the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Andromeda galaxy. The study reveals the existence of long filamentary structures of gas and dust which move in a spiral starting at a distance from the black hole and ending up at the black hole itself. The results, which have been published in the Astrophysical Journal, were obtained using images from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. The Andromeda Galaxy, which is
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  • Image of the Nube galaxy through different telescopes. Credit: SDSS/GTC/IAC
    Press release
    Nube, the almost invisible galaxy which challenges the dark matter model
    A group of astrophysicists led by Mireia Montes, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered the largest and most diffuse galaxy recorded until now. The study has been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, and has used data taken with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) and the Green Bank Radiotelescope (GBT). Nube is an almost invisible dwarf galaxy discovered by an international research team led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in collaboration with the University of La Laguna (ULL) and other institutions. The name was
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  • Participants in the "2023 Visiting Researchers" programme of Fundació Occident
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    The "Visiting Researchers" programme of the Occident Foundation strengthens the commitment to attract prestigious scientific personnel to the IAC
    Nine internationally renowned specialists in the field of astrophysics have participated this year in the "Visiting Researchers" programme of the Occident Foundation (formerly the Jesús Serra Foundation), spending a minimum of one month and up to three months at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). As in previous editions, the invited researchers have been able to work together with members of the scientific teams of the different lines of research of this institute. The "Visiting Researchers" programme aims to attract the presence of internationally renowned researchers to
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