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.

  • Image of the Sun from GONG telescopes network in Hα filter. Prominences are seen as dark filaments over the solar disk. The arrow indicates a prominence that oscillates. The diagram shows the horizontal velocity of the prominence. In the first phase of th
    An international team led by researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL) has cataloged around 200 oscillations of the solar prominences during the first half of 2014. Its development has been possible thanks to the GONG network of telescopes, of which one of them is located in the Teide Observatory.
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  • Plot of the measured depths Dn  in the five wavelengths indicated, versus the depths Dw
    We report ground-based spectrophotometry of KIC 8462852, during its first dimming events since the end of the Kepler mission. The dimmings show a clear colour-signature, and are deeper in visual blue wavelengths than in red ones. The flux loss' wavelength dependency can be described with an Ångström absorption coefficient of 2.19±0.45, which is compatible with absorption by optically thin dust with particle sizes on the order of 0.0015 to 0.15 μm. These particles would be smaller than is required to be resistant against blow-out by radiation pressure when close to the star. During
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  • Graphic of the model spectrum for the opbservational data
    Galaxy-cluster gravitational lenses can magnify background galaxies by a total factor of up to ~50. Here we report an image of an individual star at redshift z = 1.49 (dubbed MACS J1149 Lensed Star 1) magnified by more than ×2,000. A separate image, detected briefly 0.26″ from Lensed Star 1, is probably a counterimage of the first star demagnified for multiple years by an object of ≳3 solar masses in the cluster. For reasonable assumptions about the lensing system, microlensing fluctuations in the stars’ light curves can yield evidence about the mass function of intracluster stars and
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