The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located in Chile, today released its first images of the universe, known in astronomy as an instrument's “first light”. This event marks the beginning of a project that will revolutionise our understanding of the universe over the next decade. Jointly funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Energy (DOE), the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is participating, as part of a consortium of Spanish institutions, in its scientific exploitation and contributing observation time from the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC or

The EU-funded EDUCADO project (Exploring the Deep Universe by Computational Analysis of Data from Observations) at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is organising a two-night astronomical observation school providing hands-on research training for early-stage researchers in astronomy and computer science. The program will convene 15 doctoral candidates from across Europe for an immersive, interdisciplinary learning experience. Attendees will engage in night time astronomical observations utilizing state-of-the-art telescopic instrumentation, guided data analysis workshops, and

The distribution of planets in the over five thousand distant solar systems discovered to date forms a complex puzzle. There is a region in the planetary orbit graph, known as the " Neptunian desert", where very few Neptune-like planets with orbits of between two and four days period around their star have been recorded to date. Now, a scientific team led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IAA-CSIC) , using a novel technique, new planets around red dwarf stars located precisely in