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.

  •  Simulation illustrating the distribution of dark matter particles expected in a low-mass galaxy if the dark matter did not collide (in orange, concentrated towards the center) versus the observed dark matter (in blue, far more dispersed) / Gabriel Pérez (IAC)
    The existence of dark matter is likely one of the most perplexing problems facing the scientific community, and unraveling its nature has become one of the primary goals of modern physics. In simple terms, we do not know what dark matter is made of, despite accounting for 85% of all the matter in the Universe. A study led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias concludes that dark matter does not behave as described by the dominant paradigm, which states that dark matter particles only interact with each other and with ordinary matter through gravity. The IAC study reveals that dark
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  • Asteroid reflectance spectra from Gaia DR3
    Asteroids are the remnants of the planetary formation in the Solar System and so, their study helps us to understand the conditions during the early stages of the formation of our planetary system. Among asteroids, those classified as primitives present similar spectra to that of carbonaceous chondrites, i.e., they are rich in carbon and organic compounds and silicates altered by the presence of liquid water (phyllosilicates). Primitive asteroids are well characterized in various wavelength regions, showing their most diagnostic feature at 3μm. However, there is a lack of information in the
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  • Central region of the old galaxy NGC 1386 where thousands of stars are forming into star clusters
    An international study led by Almudena Prieto, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has found places where new stars are forming, as faint star clusters, around the centre of an evolved galaxy. This is the first time that young populations of stars have been picked out and dated in this type of galaxies dominated by very old stars, which can be called “rejuvenated old galaxies”. The research has combined observations from various telescopes, both ground based and space based, and has used innovative techniques of data analysis. The results are published in the
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  • Observation of 2024 NP2 obtained with the TST telescope
    The discovery of 2024 NP2 took place during the night of July 4th in images taken during the commissioning of the TST, a new telescope recently installed at the Teide Observatory. On July 4th the first regular observations were made in the commissioning of the Transient Survey Telescope (TST), an astronomical installation produced by a public-private collaboration between the IAC and the Canary company Light Bridges , at the Teide Observatory (Tenerife). The TST is a robotic telescope with a wide field. With a 1 metre telescope and a camera using an sCMOS detector at its prime focus, it can
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  • Magnetar surrounded by the nebula responsible for the radio emission associated with some FRBs
    A new international study, using observations from the Gran Telescopio Canarias at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, has identified a plasma bubble as the source of the persistent emission observed in some of the so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs), one of the most powerful and unknown cosmic events in the Universe. The data also allow researchers to constrain the nature of the “engine” powering these mysterious sources. The results are published today in Nature. Discovered just over a decade ago, fast radio bursts (FRBs) emit millisecond-long pulses that release an immense
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  • Selection of galaxy images taken by Euclid
    A new citizen science project launched today by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Euclid Consortium, in collaboration with the Zooniverse platform, will enable volunteers from around the world to identify the shapes of millions of galaxies in images taken by ESA's Euclid space telescope. The aim of the initiative is to train deep AI neural networks to build the largest morphology catalogue to date. In November 2023 and May 2024, the world got its first glimpse at the quality of Euclid’s images, targeting a variety of sources, from nearby nebulas to distant clusters of galaxies. And
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