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.

  • Teide Observatory (above) and Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (below). Credits: Daniel López and Pablo Bonet (IAC).
    The International Scientific Committee (Spanish initials CCI) of the Canary Island Observatories, meeting last week at the University of Louvain (Belgium) made an appeal to all the relevant authorities to collaborate among themselves to facilitate the development of these "Singular Scientific and Technological Infrastructures" on the islands.
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  • Diseño artístico de la súper-Tierra  GJ 625 b y su estrella, GJ625 (Gliese 625). Crédito: Gabriel Pérez, SMM (IAC).
    An international team led by researchers from the IAC, using the radial velocity method, have discovered a possibly rocky planet at the edge of the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. Only a few dozen planets of this kind are known and its detection was made possible with the HARPS-N spectrograph on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) at the Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma.
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  • Observations obtained with CLASP of the intensity and polarization in the hydrogenLyman-alpha line of the solar radiation at 1216 Angstroms. LEFT PANEL: image of the region of the Sun observed by CLASP (1 arcsec corresponds to 725 km on the solar disk). T
    The CLASP experiment, motivated by theoretical investigations carried out at the IAC, opens a new research window in astrophysics by being able to measure polarization signals in two spectral lines of the solar ultraviolet radiation. The observed polarization provides information on the magnetic field and geometry of the plasma in the enigmatic transition region between the chromosphere and corona of the Sun. CLASP is an international project whose first results have just been published in the The Astrophysical Journal.
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  • M42, the Orion Nebula, also known as NGC 1796 is a diffuse nebula below Orion's Belt. It is one of the brightest nebulae in the sky, and can be observed with the naked eye during the night. It is some 1,270 light years away, and has a diameter of some 24
    This IAC project, funded by the FECYT, will allow us to put together the biggest panoramic image of our galaxy without using professional telescopes. The photographs will be taken with a digital camera from the Teide Observatory, and will generate material for many outreach and educational applications.
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